


The Quiet River Rages

by MaryDragon



Series: Trouble the Water [3]
Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Anger, Dreams and Nightmares, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, I swear to God, I will earn the explicit rating eventually, Memory Loss, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV First Person, POV Zelda, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Unreliable Narrator, tagged characters have speaking parts, thematic successor to part 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2018-11-20 01:42:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 71,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11326041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryDragon/pseuds/MaryDragon
Summary: A thematic successor to Part 1, Calm Waters Run Deep. Picks up where Part 2 ended, "Do you really remember me?" Runs through the 'true' ending and goes a short time past. First-person POV, Zelda.Do not HAVE to read the rest of the series but you'll lose some flavor and miss references.*Fair warning: this has become surprisingly autobiographical. I am pulling from my personal experience of trying to build a relationship with someone who has PTSD, a traumatic brain injury, and memory loss. (spoiler: we've been together 11 years and are happy as pigs in shit) My experience is not universal, and this is not meant to be a definitive look at PTSD, trauma, or the recovery process. If this sounds like it might be triggering to you, please keep scrolling.Tagged characters have speaking parts.**Explicit rating for chapter 11.**





	1. There Will Be Time

**Author's Note:**

> I currently plan for there to be 12 chapters, however I do not yet have the story finished. Updates will be irregular but only by my standards. As AO3 goes, this will be finished before you know it.  
> My intention is to have each chapter be a thematic mirror to the chapters of Calm Waters Run Deep. The story will play out differently, of course, but the progression will be similar.

When we met in the last lifetime, he had his back to me, as he knelt at my father’s feet in the great Sanctum of Hyrule Castle.

When we met in _this_ lifetime, it was face-to-face on the charred earth of the Fields, my heart in my hands and a hundred years of strife at our backs.

“May I ask... do you really remember me?”

He had his head covered, but I did not need his face to recognize him. His footsteps jarred me from my slumber in Hylia’s embrace, and soothed me as I fought to keep the Calamity at bay. His voice echoed in all my best memories, and his smile had warmed me after my most bitter of defeats.

I had none of that to guide me now, though. His feet were planted in the blackened soil, the sound of his steps stilled once more into memory. His jaw was clamped shut; had I never seen it clenched, known how much tighter it could be held, I would have been disheartened by the tension I saw. His smile rarely touched his lips, but with his hood drawn it was impossible to read the truth in his eyes.

I knew him, I _knew him_ , but the man before me was a stranger.

“I... don’t know,” he answered, as the last of the red of Malice cleared from the air. “I would like to say yes, but can I truly remember anyone if I can’t remember myself?”

It was a fair question, and one I should have considered long before now. Was I so selfish, as to be completely engrossed by the need for him to remember _me_ , and never stop to worry whether he had remembered _himself_?

“I don’t think memory is all-or-nothing,” I answered, carefully, hoping to have a bit more courtesy moving forward. I’d let my hopes jump ahead of my sense, yet again. A hundred years had done nothing, it seemed, to temper my inherent foolishness. “I had rather hoped the sword would give you back _all_ your memory. I assume that wasn’t the case?”

He shrugged, shook his head, and then shrugged again. Great Goddesses, why couldn’t I see his face?

“I... am not sure,” he said, softly. “I think I... I need to sleep? I think the sword has an easier time talking to me in dreams.”

“You did tell me, once, that you saw visions of other lives in your dreams,” I replied, aiming for _encouraging_.

He turned, slightly, as if to face me. Not that I _knew_ , since I couldn’t see his blasted _eyes_. I was quickly forming a hatred for that damn hood.

“What do you remember?”

“Well, everything, I suppose,” I replied, a bit thrown off by the query. “I’ve been awake as long as you were asleep, although I was a bit... out of it, for a while there. I don’t know all the specifics about what you’ve been doing since you awoke, but of what I’ve seen, I remember everything.”

“No. What do you remember from _before_? From when we were... _us_?”

Oh, my heart. “I remember everything, Link. I’ve had nothing but memories to sustain me these one hundred years.”

He looked sharply, suddenly, at the ground off to my right. Before the hood hid even more of his face from sight, though, I caught a glimpse of what I hadn’t seen before-

-his jaw, clenched hard against words he didn’t want to say, gritted so hard his teeth ground audibly.

He nodded, once, and then tipped his head up to take a searching sort of look at the sky, and finally – finally! – I could see his face.

He bore scars I wasn’t familiar with – remnants of the battle that took him from me a hundred years before as well as much newer acquisitions – and his hair was tied back in a way I hadn’t seen before, but his eyes... His eyes I would know anywhere.

He was upset, as upset as he’d been at his father, as upset as he’d been at _my_ father. Something had rattled him as badly as I’d ever seen. And still, his jaw was clamped down against whatever it was that bothered him.

“I remember you like to stay out of the rain,” he said instead, and I didn’t argue the change of subject. “Which means we should get to shelter within the next hour or two.”

“As you say, sir knight,” I answered, pouring as much amiability into my tone as I possessed. “You’ve been out in the elements while I was locked up in the Castle; I find I must still bow to your superior judgment when it comes to the weather.”

He nodded, and then seemed to pause and consider. Then he turned his back to me, twisting his right arm around so his bracer was pressed into the small of his back, laces up.

It was a different bracer, different laces, and a layer of cloth between his skin and mine, but the muscle memory was strong, and the joy that sprang to life in my heart as I reached out and tucked my fingertips into the laces nearly stole my breath away. _He remembered this_. His head turned and he couldn’t help but see the ridiculous smile I could feel stretching across my face. His shoulders softened and I imagined his eyes crinkled in a hint of a smile; he turned away before my eyes could confirm my fancy.

We didn’t get far – just out of the charred bits and into healthy grass, glinting green in the restored sunlight – before the horse Link had used to fight Ganon appeared a short distance across the Field, galloping towards us. She charged straight up to Link and pushed her face into his chest, knocking him backwards a step to stumble heavily against me. I put up a hand to catch him, and for a moment I had a face full of his hood as his left hand swung around to catch me and keep me from tumbling. His hand came to rest on my left hip, and I gasped involuntarily, inhaling a lungful of _him_. Steel and magic and smoke and horse and forest and rain and everything wild.

It was the first time someone had _touched me_ in a hundred years. It was a cool glass of water after wandering the desert, and it was all I could do not to grab his shoulder and _hang on_ for dear life.

“There’s my brave girl,” he murmured, and the horse eased back, allowing him to step forward; his hand slid free of my hip, and the moment was lost.

“Did you want to meet the Princess, Saria?” he continued in the same soft tone, and it was all I could do to keep silent, to keep my dismay buried. _He didn’t remember this, he couldn’t possibly remember this, he would never name a horse-_

“The name means something, doesn’t it?” His tone didn’t change, so it took a moment to realize he was addressing me. I’d tried so hard not to react, but it seemed he could tell, regardless. “It was the best name I could think of, the most honorable name I could give her. I knew someone named Saria, didn’t I?”

I swallowed, as he ran a hand down the mare’s neck and she nuzzled her nose around his pockets, probably looking for sugar or apples. “You did,” I managed, against the lump in my throat.

He nodded, and then took a step, tugging me into motion behind him. “Come on, ladies,” he murmured, and led the way across the field, back towards the ruins of my ancestral home.

The horse – Saria – was inspecting me closely as we travelled. She clearly adored Link; he’d always had a way with horses, so that wasn’t surprising in and of itself, but there was something different happening here. I was never the judge of horseflesh that Link was, but I couldn’t help but notice Saria was smaller than his Epona had been; she was far more compact, not as muscular, and I had to conclude she wasn’t as fast or as strong as the mounts he had generally chosen before.

Of course, there weren’t royal stables at hand anymore for him to simply walk in and choose from, and he hadn’t been awake long enough to raise a foal of his own like he had with Epona. The horses I had noticed from my time with Hylia had all been wild, and that was probably the source of this Saria.

But still, with all the wild horses in the country to choose from – and I was certain he could have his pick – why this one? She was short and slow and timid, why not find a faster stallion?

The question was answered before I had a chance to voice it, as we entered the ruins of the Castle Town and started to pick our way towards the bridge leading over the moat to the Castle proper. Saria suddenly stopped, bracing herself and pulling back, hard, against the lead Link had been holding slack in the hand not currently claimed by me.

“What is it?” he asked the startled mare. She rolled her eyes, tilting her head towards one of the many now-defunct Guardians, and then pulled back against the lead again.

“They’re not a danger anymore,” he reassured her, reaching out with his left hand to run his palm across the side of her face.  “We fixed it, just like I said we would. It’s already looking at us, see? Not making any move to fire. It’s fine, I promise.”

She tossed her head and then fixed him a clearly disapproving stare before giving herself a shake and then taking a tentative sort of step forward.

“She understands you?” I managed to ask through my astonishment as Link started walking towards the Castle again, pulling me along behind.

“She does, somehow. She’s the smartest horse I’ve ever encountered, it’s uncanny. She’s not the fastest or the strongest or the most resilient but she’s intelligent enough to make up for it. The downside is, she’s smart enough to know real danger... she’ll go where I tell her even though she’s terrified.”

“Where did you find her?”

“Cornered in a marsh by bokos,” he answered, and it was everything I could do to keep my reaction silent. Oh, he didn’t know, _he didn’t know_ , I didn’t want to have to tell him- “They ride horses now, since so many went wild after the Calamity. They just corner wild herds and kill them off until the ones left are too frightened to fight. She was alone. I didn’t see if there was a herd she’d lost before then, but in the time I spent sneaking up on the two silver bokos who had her cornered, I could tell she was smarter than them. The things she tried to do to get away... I couldn’t bear the thought of something that intelligent being tormented by bokos, having her spirit broken.”

It was too close – far too close – to the story about the original Saria for me to keep a straight face. The knowledge was there, buried deep in his mind, and it had bubbled up in the worst way possible. I was going to have to tell him, _have to_ , and the mere concept was heartbreaking. The one memory he would be better off without is the one I absolutely had to give back to him. He couldn’t see my face, though, so he kept up with the story.

“She saw me, of course. But since the bokos were between her and I, I wasn’t more of a threat than they were. She kept backing up, into this bend in the river, and kept looking at me; she wouldn’t be able to save herself, once she got pinned against the river, so she was trusting me to get her out. And she did it _deliberately_.”

He slowed his pace, shaking his head slowly, and then sped up again. “It was... odd, killing those bokos. Like they went down too easy. Like I was too angry to match the scenario. I kicked their bodies into the river and then fished out an apple for the horse. I thought I would put it on the ground to help lure her away from the river and then continue on my way but she kicked the apple aside and bunted me in the chest with her face. I told her it wasn’t safe to stay around me, that I liked to climb mountains and jump off cliffs and dive off bridges and she just kept following. Eventually I took her to the stable by the Ash Swamp and gave her to the girl there, but she went nearly mad when I tried to walk away. They gave me a saddle and bridle for her, registered her so if anybody found her out in the wilderness she’d get back to me, and then I took her to Kakariko. If I left her there, with Paya, she was content.”

“Paya?”

“Impa’s grand-daughter. Great-granddaughter? Something like that. I figured Paya would be the best person because she was the same sort of very intelligent, very timid personality that wanted to be brave and fought for it, tooth and nail. For the most part, Saria was content to stay there. I told Impa I was headed into the Castle, and Paya must have sent Saria after I left. Clever girls, the both of them.”

“I’m not sure you can get away with calling Impa a clever girl,” I said softly.

He chuckled silently, and a weight lifted from me to see the slight hunch to his shoulders and the way his head ducked just a touch; I had missed his laugh most of all.

“I meant Paya and Saria,” he amended. “Although you should see Purah. She reversed her aging and looks like a child.”

“You’re not serious.” While it sounded like something Purah would do, I didn’t honestly think it was possible. Talking about Purah, though, was better than the conversation we needed to have about Saria, or the unsettling implications of Link having become close with whoever this Paya was.

“Serious as full plate in a thunder storm,” he replied, and I felt another laugh bubble up. Goddess, but it would be so easy to pretend nothing had changed...

But it had. Oh, had it ever. We passed into the ruins of the Castle Town and finally saw the extent of the destruction with my own two eyes.

It had been bad, when I’d passed through a century before to challenge Ganon and keep him from finding the Shrine of Resurrection and killing Link while he slept. The time that had passed had washed away the remains of those slain when Hyrule had fallen, cleansed the death from the land, and then bent to work at eroding the bones of the Castle itself. There were few walls standing, and none of those were intact. There wasn’t enough stone left visible to rebuild even a tenth of what had fallen; the wind and rain and Guardian beams had rendered the place I had grown up unrecognizable.

I felt the laugh die as a few landmarks became apparent and I could orient myself to where we stood. The fountain, there. The gates and drawbridge, there. I started to see outlines in the ground where foundations had been, and as we moved closer to the Castle Gates I was able to recall what had been. The butcher, there. The glass blower, beyond. The tavern, across the way. The beautiful inn that had hovered over the fountain square – of it there was not even a flagstone yet in place.

I let Link lead me over the damaged bridge and through the narrow gap in the great gates, and finally saw the Castle with my own eyes.

It was simultaneously better and worse than the Castle Town beyond the moat. There were broad swaths of stonework that seemed strangely untouched by time, but that only made the things that were missing all the more apparent. And there were bodies – or what once were bodies – of soldiers in every corner and nook. Empty armor, ravaged by time but recognizable, sprawled everywhere one took the time to look. The flesh was long gone, but the painstakingly crafted armor stayed behind to tell the tale.

My fingers came free of Link’s bracer and I stepped softly to an empty gauntlet, wrapped around a broken sword in the lee of a collapsed wall. When I unwrapped the fingers from the hilt, something metallic rattled in the gauntlet and then clattered free into my hand. It was smudged and dirty in a way my mind shuddered away from, but beyond that it was intact and unscathed: a man’s golden ring set with a single flawless ruby.

“Mikael,” Link said softly, taking the ring from my hand.

It took a bit of searching to remember him – the guard at the gate, the day we’d arrived back from the journey that had taken us from Gerudo Town to the slopes of Death Mountain, and completely changed my opinion of my appointed knight – and while I wracked my brain for his face, his rank, _anything_ more than the man’s name, Link frowned and shook his head.

“This ring makes me think that name,” he told me in that same soft tone. “But I don’t know why.”

“You greeted a gate guard by that name once,” I started to say, and his expression closed off. He clenched his fingers around the ring and quickly pocketed it, turned away from me. He was upset again, frustrated by his incomplete memory, perhaps. Maybe even mad at me, for not having the memories he wanted or needed? I could tell him nothing about this Mikael, and so I could not help him escape this darkness.

I looked at the empty armor littering what had once been a beautiful courtyard, piled into heaps in corners and along walls where the Guardians’ blasts would have thrown the guards who had worn it to meet their deaths. “Perhaps it is for the best,” I offered, cognizant that this hope was likely foolish. “You were a knight in the royal guard, _my_ knight, and many of these men were your friends. Perhaps it is a blessing, to look upon this scene and see a noble sacrifice rather than a personal loss.”

He took a step away from me, but not before I heard his teeth grind violently together. His back was to me – and that damned hood yet blocked my view besides – but I got the _distinct_ impression that he did _not_ see his lack of memory as any sort of blessing. I decided to immediately drop the notion. “My apologies, sir knight, I cannot-“

“Your room was destroyed,” he said, changing the subject once more. He put his arm back across his back, though, and waited until I had a firm grasp of his bracer before leading me away. “Your study is damaged, although not near as badly. Our best bet for immediate shelter is the library.” I followed meekly in his footsteps for some distance before I realized we were short one – the horse was gone.

“Where is- forgive me, but where is Saria?”

He shot me a look over one shoulder that I didn’t see enough of to read. “She’s uncomfortable around all the Guardians. I tried to get her to go back to Kakariko but I don’t think she listened. More likely, she’s roaming the Fields and waiting for us to come back out.”

“I missed that entirely, I’m sorry. I am not yet myself.”

“You can barely even say her name,” he accused softly, and I realized he wasn’t surprised by my lack of attention but rather my halting intonation. “What happened to her namesake that is so terrible you won’t even say her name?”

I did not know how to answer him. He had told me, a hundred years before, that he didn’t wish the memory of what had happened to his closest childhood friend on anyone. He would not thank me for keeping it silent, but neither would he thank me for giving it back to him. If he would be angry either way, wasn’t it better to spare him the pain? But didn’t that choice deprive him of his free will, his self-determination? I could not let him make an informed decision about the nature of the memory without telling him the memory, and so I was at an impasse. He believed he wanted the memory, but he didn’t know what it was; I knew the person he had been had struggled with the memory, but that it was the well from which his strength had initially sprung.

And, oh, wasn’t that the lesson we had failed to learn before the Calamity had struck? We had drunken deeply from the river of the ancient Sheikah technology but forgotten the spring from whence it came. It had been used to fight Ganon ten thousand years before; he had spent a hundred centuries planning a counter-offensive, and we had foolishly done nothing to account for it.

How could Link recognize the eddies he was caught in if he was blind to the existence of the river? I had to tell him, but as I opened my mouth to do so, he breathed out a sigh of bitter resignation and once again changed the subject. “The library, then.”

“Link, I-“

“Another time, Princess,” he interrupted. “I am not positive the Castle is cleared of lizalfos, so mind your step.”

He knew damn well he’d slain every lizard in this wretched hive the last time he came through, but my safety was a point I had long since ceased to argue with him. I focused instead on awakening my own disused senses. The air smelled of dust and rot and was heavy with the acrid tang of magic. There had been too much power in these halls for too many years for it to dissipate in a day – or even on its own; most likely we would need to pull down more walls and thoroughly air out the corridors before the scent of Ganon would fade.

The floors were filthy to the point of hiding our passage, which was as horrifying as helpful. A century of lizards and moblins and rot had left the carpeting a matted mess, layered with countless footprints from innumerable patrols. In addition to our tracks being immediately swallowed in the seemingly endless layers of mud stains and scuffs on the floors, the thick layer of filth also muted our steps. A rumble of thunder managed to penetrate the crumbled stone, but beyond that there was only our cautious breaths to break the silence.

The air was hazy with dust and a century of smog from ill-kept, smoking lanterns; the humidity from the storm building just beyond the cracked and broken walls only added to the thickness of the atmosphere. Looking up, the ceilings were surprisingly clean of soot, and the upper portions of the walls and the tapestries that hung there were all far cleaner than the floor below. With the thickness in the air, it was an oddity I couldn’t quite explain.

We had to back track around collapsed hallways and clamber over piles of tumbled rock but he did not pull free of my grip and he kept his pace restrained so I could match him. I felt clumsy in a way I was unfamiliar with; I supposed my body had been dormant for so long that it was taking a bit to fall back into the routines of life. I still hadn’t eaten, so surely my metabolism would falter soon. My throat was starting to feel dry, but I wasn’t yet cognizant of _thirst_ – I was confident the sensation would be one of the first to reawaken, followed shortly thereafter by hunger, and then an intense need to void my bladder for the first time in a century. My hair and nails hadn’t grown, my skin hadn’t changed, my womanly cycle had stopped... all of it was sure to come back sooner rather than later, and until then I was just going to be a bit uncomfortable in my body.

Had Link felt the same way, when he’d woken up? He’d been asleep, rather than ethereal, so his muscles had wasted and then been rebuilt; surely, he’d felt worse? Weaker, perhaps, and less coordinated?

I would ask him if he wasn’t clearly upset about his memories. It was something for another time.

“Nice of the lizalfos to keep their desecration to only the bottom half of each floor,” I noted as Link led me around a few collapsed rooms and into the library through a hole in the wall rather than a doorway. The library was remarkably intact, although I could see where the lizard-folk had left trails of refuse along the routes of their patrols, and the second-floor walkways were collapsed.

Link glanced up and then shot me a grimly amused sort of look. “The upper walls and ceilings were all coated by Malice,” he corrected. “I’m sure the lizalfos would have mucked it up if it hadn’t been.”

“Like Naydru was? The strange eyeball things?”

Link nodded as he led me down a half-broken stairwell and around several piles of rubble to a section of bookshelf that looked remarkably well preserved. “Strange that he was the only dragon to be afflicted.”

That, again, was a conversation I could avoid for now. As the only remaining member of the Hyrule noble family, there were a number of secrets I had to disclose, to make sure nothing died with me... and there was only one person I could see sharing it with. A discussion about the Triforce and the history of Hyrule could wait for another day; if he was struggling with memories of himself, a long discussion about the ancient past was probably not in his best interests just yet.

I didn’t have to dissemble, though; Link didn’t expect a response. He pulled his right arm around to his side, probably expecting me to release it. I didn’t – I swung around so I was at his side, as well, and let his bracer spin in my grasp so that I kept my grip on it. He froze for a moment, shooting me a curious look out of the side of his eyes, and then pulled out the Sheikah slate. He brought up some screen I was unfamiliar with, and then held the device in front of him.

A dark sort of vivid pink color shot out of the front of the slate, and seemed to latch onto the bookshelf in front of us. Link tilted the slate to the side, and one entire section of shelving broke free from the wall. I watched, stunned, as Link stepped carefully around me and moved the shelf to the side, and then with an odd snap of his wrist, the pink disappeared and the shelf settled onto the floor with a metallic sort of thud.

“What in the world was that?”

“Magnesis rune,” he answered, holding the slate out to show me. “When I first woke up there was nothing on it except a blank map, but the first few shrines I visited put other runes onto the slate, and Purah was able to restore your camera and the twelve images you had saved for me.”

“So it _does_ do more than take pictures.”

“You were right,” he replied, and then gestured to the dark space where the shelf had been. “I don’t know how much you know about the towers I found, but you were right to want to focus on excavations.”

“I can’t dwell on it anymore,” I sighed as I watched Link dig out a torch, light it from a nearly-empty lamp, and gesture for me to follow him into the room he’d uncovered behind the shelf. “There is no way to know what might have been, and that line of thought can only end in bitterness. What happened, happened, and we have to move forward.”

“I’m glad you think that,” he said, and lifted the torch.

It was a study. A very richly appointed study, that practically screamed of-

“Your father used this space,” Link said, unknowingly finishing my thought. “I didn’t realize what I’d found until I read the journal, but I knew you would need to see this room.”

I’d had a hundred years of quiet contemplation to come to peace with my relationship with my father, but that did not mean I was prepared to investigate his hidden sanctuary. I stood in the middle of the room and spun slowly as Link lit a mostly-full oil lamp, extinguished his torch, and then set about lighting the very fine candles my father had kept here. By the time he was finished, the room was nicely illuminated. I heard a dull _boom_ behind me and spun to see Link had pulled the shelving back into place.

“A bit early to be settling in for the night, isn’t it?”

Link shrugged and then dropped to the floor, setting his back to the wall and gesturing at the heavy chair at the desk. “It probably is.”

I followed his direction and sat in my father’s chair. There was a book sitting in the middle of the desk, but I turned my back to it. My father was gone but Link was here; it was easy to see which of the two needed my attention. “And yet here we are?”

Link pulled his pack off and dropped it on the floor next to him and begun rummaging through. “When is the last time you ate?”

Uh oh. “Well. That depends on whether you consider the consumption of elixirs as eating.”

He shrugged agreeably but didn’t lift his eyes from the pack. “It’s not quite the same but it’ll get you by.”

“Alright. Then whatever the vile concoction was that I drank at the bottom of the cliff after we’d left Kakariko.”

He paused in his rummaging and slowly pulled his eyes up to meet mine. “You haven’t eaten anything since then?”

I shook my head. “I was in shock, I think, in the day that followed. And then I went to the Castle to challenge Ganon and didn’t use my body again until today.”

There was a shift, of sorts, in his expression and posture; I was at a loss to interpret it. After a moment of watching me with this new, unfathomable look on his face, he dove back into his pack. He pulled out a series of paper-wrapped parcels that I recognized as the pre-made meals Link packed when he wasn’t sure he would have access to a cook fire. We’d only ever needed to use them once – when we had been beset by monsters during our hike up Death Mountain that ended in Link’s arm sliced open by Lynels.

“Mushroom rice balls,” he said, as he rose gracefully to his feet and crossed the small room, parcels in hand. “And this one is a stuffed pumpkin. Go _slow_. I got sick the first time I ate after I woke up. Try to wait a full minute between swallowing and taking another bite. Go easy with the water, as well.”

I nodded as he handed me the food and a water skin then turned to go back to his pack, presumably for a meal for himself. I peeled back the paper and as the smell hit my face – mushrooms and rice and delicate spice and _Link’s cooking_ – I was suddenly hungrier I had ever been before in my life.

I took one exceptionally uncouth mouthful and forced myself to chew and actually taste it, rather than throwing it back as quickly as I could manage. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on the flavors of the rice and mushrooms rather than simply devouring it.

“Slow,” Link reminded me, and I opened my eyes to verify the smile in his voice was actually on his face. It wasn’t – not really – but he looked closer to an open smile than he had all day.

“I have never understood the way you eat before right now,” I said after swallowing. It was a battle to not immediately take another bite, but he was right – wasn’t he _always_ right? It would take him a bit of time to get the bookshelf moved, so the last thing I wanted to do was get sick in such a confined space.

“It’s poetic justice for you calling me a glutton,” he countered dryly.

When had I...? I was quite certain I lacked poor enough manners to have ever actually said that word aloud, much less to his face. I took another bite of rice and searched my memory. I had definitely never called him a glutton aloud! I had thought it, of course, but he couldn’t read my thoughts. Surely the sword hadn’t plucked it from my mind and given it to him as a memory? Because the only other option was if he had...

…read... my... diary.

“When did you read my diary?” I asked when I’d swallowed a third bite of rice.

“When I came into the Castle for the memory indicated by the picture of the walkway between your room and your study,” he answered without a _drop_ of remorse. The beast! If I wasn’t so _famished_ still, I would yell at him. As it stood, he had a mushroom and rice ball to thank for escaping a severe tongue-lashing.

“You said my room was destroyed!” I pressed when I’d eaten the first and was trying to make myself wait before starting on the second. I picked at the stuffed pumpkin – it had never been my favorite, but here, again, the smell was alluring. It was still Link’s cooking, after all, and I was loathe to let it go to waste.

 “The ceiling collapsed on your bed and the stairs,” he clarified, yet remorseless. “Your desk, the hearth, and a path to the door remains. As far as being defensible, it’s destroyed.”

“Have you made it a habit to read diaries?”

“I made it a habit to get information about who the fuck I am, by whatever means necessary, so yes.”

He so rarely had cursed in my presence that I blanked out for a moment in shock. He cast his eyes away from mine, but not before I could see the anger that filled them. He was upset about having lost his memory, to be certain, but there seemed to be something else that pushed him into something very similar to rage.

More disconcerting was how he seemed to be fine one moment, and then furious the next. It was as if his once-iron grip on his emotions had been completely lost, and he was keeping himself under control by only a desperate act of will.

He seemed to be fidgeting more the longer I stayed silent, but I couldn’t immediately think of something to say that I was sure wouldn’t upset him further. Even a compliment on his cooking could be construed as a reference to his memories. I didn’t dare start immediately with a discussion of the future, as that might be seen as a dismissal of his struggles.

In the end, I opted to simply meet the problem head on, since there was no clear way around. “I’m sorry, Link,” I said. “I will do everything in my power to help you in whatever way I can.”

He spun his head around to face me, his eyes briefly wide with surprise. They narrowed quickly, into an expression far shrewder than I was used to seeing from him. “Would you tell me what the significance of Saria’s name is?”

I sighed, but nodded. “You were very young when she died, and the experience was traumatic for you. When you told me the story, you said it was not a memory you wished upon anyone. Thus my hesitation in giving it back to you. You left out much of the detail, as well, so it is possible the story I tell is incomplete, or modified for my ears; I would hate to tell you the version I know and have you taken aback should the memory returns more organically.”

“We are surrounded by the dead, Princess,” he told me, as he busied his hands and eyes once more in his pack. Much of the heat was gone from his voice, though; it was possible I had diffused his anger for the time being. “Our friends, our families, most of the kingdom... dead. What is one more dead girl?”

It was a painfully cynical outlook, but it was ultimately his story and not mine; his decision. “I will tell you, if that is your wish.”

“Tomorrow,” he said, pausing briefly in his unpacking. He seemed to have gotten some sort of grip on his emotions once more. “If the telling will upset you, it should wait until that meal settles, at the very least.”

“I only ate-“ I went to lift the remaining rice ball to find it missing, the pumpkin picked clean. The water skin was dry. “Oh.”

He breathed out a sound that was suspiciously close to a laugh, but there was no sign of it on his face when I looked back. He was pulling a series of blankets out of his pack, and I couldn’t help but wonder on the magic that allowed so much more space on the inside than evident on the outside of the bag.

“You need to sleep as well,” I told him, as I watched the way he arranged the blankets into a single thick pile, wide enough for one. “This room is untouched by the filth of the library, I know we are well hidden.”

He hesitated for a long moment and then began to split the pile in two. After everything we had survived, everything we had endured, everything we had shared, the idea of sleeping an arm’s length apart was distasteful. It was probably for the best, and Link was always right, but I had left my accumulated Wisdom with Hylia, it seemed, and taken my foolishness back with my body.

“Link, I...  I didn’t eat once while we were apart. I took no water, I breathed no air, I could not be conscious of my body because it floated in a cloud of malice and fire. The last... the last person I touched was _you_ , when I checked your heartbeat one last time before Purah and Robbie carried you off. I’m sorry if it’s presumptuous of me or... or... I don’t even know. But I haven’t been _touched_ in so long, I... I...”

As I fought for the words to explain what I was asking, Link kicked the second pile of bedding back towards the first, dropped onto it, and held out his arms to me.

Bless him.

I would like to believe I possessed some measure of grace as I took three steps and then collapsed into a heap beside him, but I was well past the point of caring. Link was being tormented by some inner demon, my kingdom was in ruins, everything I had ever loved – and almost every _one_ – was dead or destroyed, but _by the Goddess_ I was not spending another night in isolation.

I turned slightly towards him, propping my head in the crook of his shoulder. His arms snaked around me, drawing me closer, and I curled against him, resting my hand on his chest and resisting the urge to rest my knee on his leg. The Master Sword was laying bare on his other side, glinting in the candlelight, and the familiarity of the scene rushed me towards the brink of sleep.

“I hate to say this,” he whispered against my hair. “I didn’t know to miss you.”

I hugged him awkwardly with my one hand on his chest. “I did nothing but miss you. It evened out.”

Something rumbled through his chest to my ear, but sleep had come to claim me, and whatever response he made was lost as I was pulled under.


	2. Sometimes, When We Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Master Sword continues its work in Link's dreams, Zelda's vocabulary evolves, and a step forward in communication is taken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Potential Triggers: Nightmares/Night Terrors/PTSD-type Flashback
> 
> *
> 
> Mostly done with Chapter three, so I'm willing to post this. I've been spending time on pre-Calamity timelines for continuity's sake (the background stuff you might never see) but that means I'm in a pretty good place to start really steaming ahead on this guy.   
> Don't forget, life-type updates are being put on my tumblr (@themarydragon) in case you ever want to know why I'm not updating every four days.

_Mikael_ , he whispered, and I woke immediately.

The candles flickered at the ends of their lives – many hours had passed, then, as they were very fine and fairly fresh – so the majority of the light in the tiny room came from the oil lamp nearer the desk. It was enough to make out my surroundings, and I oriented quickly.

Father’s secret study. Ganon dead. Asleep in Link’s arms. Goddess bless, what a wonderful place to find myself.

Link didn’t wake when I moved, which struck me as odd. I only had the one memory to compare this to, but the time he'd napped on the hill he had woken easily when I’d stirred. I shifted a bit more, to turn around and look at him.

His eyes were whipping back and forth under his eyelids, far more rapidly than a normal dreamer. His arms and legs were twitching slightly, and he seemed to be trying to turn his face away from whatever visions he was being reminded of.

_Mikael_ , I heard his voice again, but his lips didn’t move. The Master Sword was glowing gently, and I realized the Sword had stopped using the voices of all the people who had wielded it across history, and instead had limited itself to the tones of its current Master.

_Mikael, my cousin_ , his voice said again, and I gasped aloud.

_The ring, our grandfather’s ring. Only the family name went to his father, as the house went to mine.  A few years my elder. First to the guard. First to welcome me. First to take my side against Father. I never had a brother, but I had Mikael._

I was at a loss for what to do. All I could manage was to cling to Link as he grew increasingly restless and pray the dream passed gently and allowed him to slip back into a restful sleep.

My prayers went unanswered.

He sat up with a shout that turned into a wail of loss, and I released him as he tumbled away rather than try to hold on. “Link,” I hissed, certain that any lizalfos still in the Castle would be alerted to our presence now. “Link, it was just a dream, Link-“

He turned wide eyes on me and drew a shaking breath. “Mikael,” he said. “Mikael, the empty glove, the ring, my grandfather's ring; he was my cousin. My cousin, Zelda, _I forgot my cousin_.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Link,” I insisted, sitting up slowly and extending one hand to rest on his shoulder. “You didn’t forget, your memories were _taken_ from you. None of it was your fault, I swear to you.”

He didn’t seem to hear me. He frantically pulled his tunic over his head and tossed it aside, reaching for the buttons on his under shirt before the tunic had settled to the floor. His hands flew across the buttons and he pulled the white linen open to reveal the broad scars left by the searing blasts of the Guardians’ beams. The skin was still pulled and puckered, as it would likely be for the rest of his life, but the musculature under it was intact; the Shrine had left him only the memory etched in his skin, and I wasn’t sure if it was a kindness. He stared at the scars as if seeing the wounds instead; as if they were fresh rather than a century old.

“I died,” he said. “I died the same way he did. The Guardians overwhelmed me and I _died_ , and then I woke up, but he didn’t, and I don’t... I don’t...”

“Link,” I whispered as fiercely as I dared, trying to keep one ear open for the shuffling steps of the lizard folk. “Link, you never died. Your heart never stopped beating. I was right there the whole time, I know for a fact: you came very close, but you never died.”

He blinked up at me, and it took a moment before any recognition bloomed in his eyes. “You... You tethered my soul to my body. I couldn’t leave.”

My heart surged into my throat. I’d never seen him like this, open and vulnerable and devastated. “I did,” I agreed, settling onto my heels so our eyes were level. “Do you wish I hadn’t?”

His eyes filled with tears. “I’m not sure.”

“I am so glad you’re here,” I told him, and his breath caught in a heartbreaking sort of gasp. “You did everything I could have asked of you. You saved the kingdom. You saved _me_. All that’s left is to save yourself.”

“I don’t... I don’t know...”

“I do,” I assured him. “I do, and we’re going to get through this.”

He seemed to be a total loss for what to do, so I shifted off my heels and laid back down, pulling him with me. He could have resisted – he was far stronger even if I did have an inch or so of height and the better leverage that came with it – but he followed soundlessly. I pulled him against me and he buried his face in my shoulder and wrapped his arms around my waist. I felt a tear trickle down my collarbone but I did not remark on it.

“I’m afraid to sleep,” he whispered.

“You will get your memories back in your dreams,” I told him, trying to be reassuring.

“I know,” he countered. “That’s why I fear it.”

“There is nothing there that you haven’t already faced down once before,” I said. “You have lived through some horrible things, but you _lived through them_. You will survive the memory.”

He remained silent, so I bid him once more to go to sleep. He shifted a bit and then his breathing seemed to even out. I didn’t dare move. I didn’t want to, of course – his shirt was left open and his skin was pressed against mine, the white dress leaving my neck and shoulders bare, and it had been so long since I had felt _anyone’s_ skin that I was grateful for any opportunity. Even those that were ultimately heartbreaking, like this one; I breathed in the feeling like it was air for a drowning man.

How had I never stopped to think about Link’s mental state? I had done nothing but think for a century; of course I had time to come to grips with everything I had seen, everything that had happened. But Link was only learning about it all now; every memory that came back was something new he had to grieve. Even the pleasant memories were relics of lost friends; the best moments from his childhood were stark reminders of everything he had lost. He only remembered he had a cousin because he’d found his cousin’s remains.

Everything that had made him the person he was had been lost. He had come to the Castle to rescue me immediately after retrieving the Sword and being forcefully returned all his lost memories. Everything before that was still to come, teased out of the recesses of his mind by a Sword familiar with its depths.

I looked at the legendary blade, gleaming a few feet away in the gathering darkness. It seemed pleased, somehow.

“You’re hurting him,” I murmured.

_I am bringing him back to you_ , it replied in Link’s voice.

“I would rather you not destroy what he’s become. What he is now is enough.”

_I know what I am doing_.

“Are you sure about that?”

The sword went silent, but Link started twitching again. I scowled at the Master Sword before realizing that the expression was an act of futility. The blade that seals the darkness would not be cowed by my frown.

“Zelda,” Link whispered against my shoulder.

“I’m here,” I assured him, but he didn’t hear – he was lost in another dream. A dream, it seemed to be, about me.

“Never allowed,” he muttered darkly, and I resolved not to listen. There was nothing to be done until he woke, and the timepiece on the wall above the desk had long since stopped so there was no way to know what time it was. Better to get what sleep I could while I could, and encourage Link to do the same.

I drifted back to sleep, to the sound of Link whispering my name in his dreams.

I awoke alone.

The lamp was turned low to conserve oil, and the candles were long cold. There was a crack of light around the bookshelf, and I had to assume Link had left it ajar when he’d left.

There was a row of three paper-wrapped parcels on the desk, and what looked to be a note on the closed book I had shuddered away from the night before. Link’s pack was present – so he hadn’t gone far – as was, blessedly, a clean chamber pot with a sturdy cover. I had little hope of moving the heavy shelf that hid the door, and I would have been immeasurably cross with him for barring me inside with no means to relieve myself, after the meal I’d had the night before.

I wasn’t overly pleased that he had trapped me within without a means of escape, but I supposed if I became desperate I could probably dig enough random odds and ends out of Link’s pack to slowly expand the gap between the shelf and the doorway and eventually topple the thing over.

As it stood, I had been trapped in the Castle for a hundred years already; what was one more morning?

I made use of the pot, investigated the food – crepes and fruit and boiled eggs, to my delight – and settled in at the desk at break my fast and do some light reading.

The note was from Link and the book it sat upon was a journal, so _light reading_ was a false hope.

_Princess,_  
_I have set out to sweep this portion of the Castle for lizalfos and other foes. I fear my outburst in the mid of night may have alerted creatures to our presence. I will return when I am sure it is safe. In the meantime, there is breakfast on the desk and a tome I believe you need to read._  
 _I will be more composed upon my return. My apologies for my behavior last night; I knew not what I said._  
 _Link_

More composed! As if he needed composure around me. How many times had I scolded him, ranted to him, teased him, tormented him, cried upon him? He’d seen me at my absolute worst; the least I could do in return is allow him to lose his composure.

I set his note aside and flipped open the cover of the journal.

It was my father’s.

I immediately flipped it closed and ate my crepes. He had said the day before that he hadn’t realized this was my father’s study until he found the journal, so honestly I had no right to be surprised. Still, seeing my name in his handwriting had been jarring in a way I had not expected.

When I had delayed as long as possible – because surely eating slow was still in my best interests – I turned and reopened the front cover. Link would not tell me to read it without reason. He remembered me, remembered my father; it was his early years he had lost. There was literally no one in the world who knew me as well as he did.

...and I the only person in the world who knew him.

My father’s journal was, in a word, devastating. I thought I had come to grips with his death, but reading his final entry shattered that vain belief. He had regretting scolding me, he had put on a brave face when speaking with me, he had felt as badly as I had about our failed relationship. He intended to table all discussion of my power, should I have returned from Mount Lanayru without success. It was hard not to wish he had gotten that chance, that I had returned to the Castle before the end. I knew better, though; I was upset as I came down the mountain and would have delayed returning to the Castle just to avoid that very conversation with my father.

I hadn’t been finished with the book for long when a tap from the library signaled Link’s return. “Princess?”

“Have you forgotten my name?” I called back.

There was a pregnant sort of pause before he replied. “No?”

“I would prefer if you would kindly _use_ it, sir knight.”

Another pause, and then a sigh. “May I come in, _Zelda_?”

“Oh, please do.”

I could have sworn he chuckled, and that made the whole thing worthwhile. His face was blank when the bookshelf moved aside, and he didn’t immediately step into the tiny room where we had spent the night.

“The Castle is clear to the moat, as far as I can tell,” he informed me. “There are probably stalfos in the courtyard, with how many deaths this ground has seen, but I won’t know for sure until tonight. We can find better accommodation in the meantime.”

“If the hallway behind the dais in the Sanctum is intact, we might be able to use the old minister’s offices. The ministers lived elsewhere but most had small bedrooms adjacent to their offices in case they needed to spend a few days in the Castle.”

“The floor of the Sanctum is gone,” he reminded me, a bit pointedly.

“I grew up here. Do you think I don’t know every back hall and secret passage?”

He opened his mouth to argue, stopped, closed it, and cocked his head as he looked at me. “No. But I thought I did, and I don’t know of a back way into the offices behind the throne.”

“Grab your pack, sir knight,” I instructed, and he lifted an eyebrow. He crossed his arms and made no move to follow my instruction.

“Link,” I amended, and he moved past me with a satisfied nod. What was good for the goose was good for the gander, it seemed.

“Are we talking about the dream the Sword gave you last night?” I asked as we slipped out of the hidden study. I left the chamber pot in an alcove in the library; I didn’t have a means to clean it, and the lizalfos had left far worse filth along the walls and floors.

“No,” he answered, rather sharply.

“Very well,” I agreed. I didn’t need to press the issue; it would come up again the next time he slept.

We made our way quickly through the damaged, debris-ridden hallways. Link was confident there were no lizalfos left, and so we abandoned any attempt at stealth. The Sanctum floor was not completely missing, as Link had feared, but such a thin lip remained around the outside that I had no hope of making my way around. Link immediately dropped off the side, gripping the edge and working his way quickly around, hand over hand, to the far side. He swung up at the foot of my father’s throne – my mother’s having been moved into a side room in a misguided attempt to spare my feelings – and spent a few moments poking around before turning around to wave at me.

“Where’s this side passage?”

“Check to see if the rooms were left empty!” I called back.

He scowled at me, but there was a measure of humor in it. He gestured for me to stay put and then disappeared around a corner to the right.

I waited a beat, made sure he was gone, and then ducked back outside.

There was a ledge along the exterior wall ringing the Sanctum, and the part I needed had looked intact when I stole a glance at it a few minutes before. This was arguably a job for Link, but I had done _so little_ while he had done _so much_ , this little act of subterfuge had become unspeakably important to me as soon as I’d thought of it.

I stepped out onto the ledge, the pitted rock beneath my fingers providing hand holds I didn’t have the benefit of when I’d last used this path.

There was a window just around the curve of the wall, leading into a closet that had been long forgotten by the time I was a defiant child, and it was the work of a moment to swing the shutters open. They were fitted so well as to stay closed without a bar or latch, and I had thought to remove the trappings the week after my mother had died.

I’d needed a place to hide, when the pain became too deep to suffer publicly. I had been careful to never disappear for so long that anyone would suspect I had a hiding place. My read-through of my father’s journal that morning had been positive in that regard, at least; if he had ever suspected I was willfully hiding from my duties, there would have been mention of it in that tome.

I pulled myself into the window, after a brief moment of terror as the sill began to crumble under my weight. Only a handful of stones tumbled down the wall behind me, but it was enough for my heart to skip a beat and for me to make a very unladylike sort of grunt as I pitched to the floor inside.

The dust was thick, and I knew the room had been undisturbed in the hundred-plus years since last I had hidden within. There was a neatly folded stack of untouched blankets tucked into one corner, and the rest of the room was nothing but empty cedar shelves. There was a small door – even I had to duck and turn a bit to the side to get through – that also stood unlocked. From the other side, the door blended so well with the decor as to go unnoticed by generations. I had only known to look for it when I’d noticed the shuttered window from the courtyard below and wondered why it stood closed on a beautiful summer day.

I pushed at the door, flinching when it creaked loudly in protest, and peeked through into the room beyond.

There were footprints in the dust that I immediately recognized as Link’s – he had performed a cursory search of the room and left already, it seemed. The room was full of crumbling bedroom furniture but lacked any obvious personal affects; no one had been in residence when the Calamity had struck, Goddess bless. I shoved the door open and followed his trail into the hall.

“Zelda!”

His voice called from somewhere distant, and I guessed he’d discovered me missing, rather than find interlopers in this dust-filled corridor. I stepped quickly through the hall, the air hung heavy with dust motes, and emerged in the Sanctum, to the right of the throne. Link was just reaching the far side of the room, swinging hand-over-hand around the jagged lip of remaining floor with a look on his face so close to panic that I felt a pang of guilt.

“I found it!” I called to him.

“Augh!” He missed his grip and his left hand slipped from the ledge he’d been scaling. He recovered quickly – his right hand held tight, and he was able to reach up with his left and pull himself up to stand on the narrow lip of floor – and turned to _glare_ at me. The force of his gaze was all the censure he needed to give me; I almost hoped for a scolding from him, but I knew it was not forthcoming.

“I expected you to clear the rooms and then I would meet you on this side and show you the path I took,” I said, pitching my voice to carry across the cavernous expanse of room. “You move faster than I remember!”

He seemed to mutter something as he carefully made his way back around the room. He didn’t drop down to go hand-over-hand on the lip of the floor, but took the slower-but-safer option of edging around the narrow ring of joists and subfloor left behind when Ganon had crashed through the day before.

Had it really only been a day?

He cleared the wrecked Sanctum and made his way slowly towards me, stepping carefully through the debris around the throne. He came to a stop maybe a pace away from me, facing me with clenched fists and a set to his jaw that informed me he was _very_ angry with me.

“I have done nothing in one hundred years,” I told him. “If you knew what my secret was, you wouldn’t have let me do it. And, as you can see, I managed it quite well. If you’d like, I can show you where I liked to hide as a child.”

My words seemed to surprise him, as his hands relaxed and he frowned at me. I took that as an affirmative, and turned to lead the way back down the hall.

I will admit, my smile when I heard him settle into place three paces behind me hurt my cheeks; it was another muscle I needed to recondition, it seemed.

I had left the door to the little closet open, and Link immediately went through and peered out the window at the ledge; it wouldn’t take him long to figure out how I’d gotten over to it. Sure enough, it was a matter of moments before he turned and shot me a flatly disapproving look.

“Was I wrong? Would you have let me pace around that ledge?”

“No.”

“Well then. My deception is justified.”

His eyes widened but that was as far as he let the astonishment spread across his face. It didn’t make sense to me; I had thought myself well versed in his reactions before the Calamity and nothing he did now was quite matching up. Of course, some of that was to be expected, given his loss of memory, of _self_ , but still!

“Did you think there was some other reason why I didn’t tell you where the window was?”

That jaw clench again; my question had struck a nerve. Perhaps I wasn’t as ill-versed in his thoughts as I feared. “Whatever your assumption, I assure you, I only wanted to test myself. I knew you would handle any threats on this side while I made my way around, and I promise I checked for your footprints in the dust before I came through the door.”

He flinched and looked away. It was possibly a terrible decision, but I impulsively stepped through the undersized door to the closet, blocking him in the little room. “Link, please, what is bothering you? Don’t make me guess, I’ll only make it worse before I figure it out. The last thing I want is to aggravate… _whatever_ it is that has you upset.”

He would not meet my eye. I did not move, resolved to wait him out. If it was such a terrible question to answer, he could flee through the window for all I cared.

Finally _finally_ he worked his jaw silently for a moment and then sighed. “I will get a handle on it, Princess.”

“Zelda,” I corrected.

“ _Zelda_ ,” he amended, but the utter lack of humor broke my heart a little. “I will be worthy of your confidence again.”

It was the last thing I expected to hear. Not worthy of my confidence? Was he insane?

“In one hundred years, I did not breathe, I did not eat, I didn’t stretch my legs,” I said softly. “I watched our friends die, watched our country wither, watched our land suffer. But I never once lost faith that you would wake up, pick up what pieces you could of the life we lost, and rescue me from that… that _pig-faced smoke demon_ and his _stink minions_. And you did. You saved Hyrule. If that doesn’t make you worthy of my confidence, my confidence isn’t worthy of _you_.”

I could see in profile the way his eyes widened, watched in astonishment as they briefly went glassy, and then he tilted his face away and that _damnable hood_ blocked my view. I could hear the shaky breath he inhaled, and I decided that was good enough for now.

I ducked back through the comically small door. “Now. The Minister of Trade was as big around as he was tall; if there is a piece of furniture capable of surviving one hundred years of dry rot, it is his bed. I believe his office was the first on the eastern hall.” I didn’t wait for him to follow; he would fall into step three paces behind me out of instinct if nothing else.

I heard the scuff of his boot as I stepped into the hall; the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The Minister of Trade’s bed was, indeed, intact. The frame, at least; the mattress was mostly moth-eaten rags and a pile of dust. Link pulled a Korok leaf out of his seemingly bottomless bag and I immediately fled to the hall and around a corner. A moment later, great billowing clouds of dust filled the hallway, and I could hear Link cough dryly.

Once the dust cleared I made my way back into the room, to see him meticulously sweeping the floor.

“Where did you find a broom?”

“Boko was using it as a spear.”

“Here?”

“No, in the ruins of a village out in Necluda.”

“You... had a broom in your bag?”

He paused in his sweeping and canted an almost smugly superior look in my direction. “Yes. Yes, I did.” He gestured at the floor. “You’re welcome.”

I laughed and shook my head and then backtracked down the hall to fetch the stack of blankets out of the old closet. They were mine; I’d hidden them one at a time on laundry days, when they were the least likely to be missed. The cold stone floor was the antithesis of the comfort I had sought, and even those few blankets had been enough to perfect my hiding place.

I paused in the Sanctum. I used the back of my father’s throne and beat the dust out of each blanket and then refolded them. When I got back to the Minister of Trade’s room, most of the dust was gone, and Link had lit a fire in the hearth.

The ropes strung across the bed frame were in surprisingly good shape, and while it wouldn’t be as comfortable as an actual mattress, with a few layers of blankets it would be a good bit better than the stone floor. I began making a bed for us as Link prepared what smelled like lunch.

“I’m sorry,” he said, so softly I almost missed it.

“Whatever for?”

“Last night. You’re right, it was just a dream, I had no reason to panic like I did.”

“You had every reason to panic like you did,” I countered. “The sword is feeding you memories, leading your dreams. You have no control over what’s happening. That’s not something you’ve ever done well with.”

“Stop.”

“Stop what?” I tugged the last blanket into place and turned to look at him.

“Stop... _that_. Stop dismissing everything I do wrong.”

“You’re not doing anything wrong.”

“ _Stop it_ ,” he hissed, and I pressed my lips together. “I was fine – fine! – until I picked up the damn sword and everything came back in a flood. A _flood_. I know I remembered Mikael then, but I couldn’t pick it out of everything else. And now I know everything’s in there and I know there’s horrible things to come and I know I’m going to freak the _fuck out_ again and _its not okay_. What if there would have actually been lizarfos in the library last night? Stalfos risen out of the courtyard? One of the moblins from down in the lockup or the mess hall? I can’t wake up screaming in the middle of the night, and it’s irresponsible as shit for you to dismiss it as _okay_. This is the kind of shit that...”

He trailed off and scrubbed a hand through his hair as he looked away quickly. “The kind of shit that got all our friends killed.”

This was far past my ability to reason through. He was right – I had been worried about someone hearing his outburst – but that didn’t make any of it his fault, and it definitely wasn’t something he could control. I couldn’t _say that_ , though, because he considered it dismissive. I caught myself clenching my jaw and I worked to smooth my expression.

“Very well. What would you like me to do instead?”

“What?”

“If you don’t want my honest opinion about the situation, what sort of lie would you rather I provide? Would you like me to lie and say it is your fault? I told the sword to leave you alone, that you were good enough as you were and to let the memories come organically. Is that a better thing to say?”

He didn’t reply, but as I spoke his jaw clenched tighter and tighter until I could hear the creak of his teeth grinding. 

“Or perhaps you could drop this ridiculous insistence that I look upon you with the same censure you have for yourself. I continue to find you faultless in what transpires, and I promise I will inform you immediately – and probably gleefully – the first time you _actually_ commit an error in judgement. Since I’ve never actually seen one from you, it will be akin to meeting a flying Moblin or a talking fish, and you can expect me to react accordingly.”

“It’s not fucking funny,” he managed from between gritted teeth.

“Of course it’s not. Which is why I’m _not fucking laughing_.”

He blinked when I swore, and I took the opportunity to turn away from him and walk out of the room.

I’d never known his confidence to be so shaken. I’d never known him to be like... _this_. It was the sword, the _blasted sword_ and I really liked the stupid thing better when it and I had been pining over Link together. It had answers when I needed them, but ultimately it wasn’t human. It didn’t know Link like I did, and it was _hurting him_. He wasn’t every other person who had ever held the sword, he was _himself_ and he deserved better treatment than as just one of an endless line of ultimately nameless warriors.

I busied myself in an office down the hall, mindlessly sorting books. I thought to pick those that were useful from those that weren’t, but ultimately everything was potentially useful. A ledger of shipments coming into the Castle wasn’t helpful on the surface, as all the items were relatively perishable and unidentifiable by now; but showing how much Hyrule paid its citizens for fish, as compared to traders from abroad, would be a basis for new policy that might be helpful in the days to come. Another ledger showed the exchange rate between rupees and foreign currency stretching back sixteen generations. More importantly, it showed how rupees were historically stable against the price of gems and other minerals, indicating our currency might be worth the same now as it was one hundred years ago. I first thought to discard books on heraldry and noble lines of descent, but it might be handy in disproving claimants in the coming years, and supporting my attempts at creating a new noble class.

Which is, flatly, what would need to be done. Even if someone _had_ survived, they hadn’t stepped up and attempted to organize the remaining Hylians. They might be of noble heritage, but definitely not noble birth. Our new country would be built on the backs of the survivors and led only by the selfless, the determined, the worthy.

Lucky for me, Link had been the width and length of the country, and had met most everyone who still lived here. Surely some Hylians had escaped over the sea and their descendants would seek to return with the defeat of the Calamity, but no one who fled our shores would be brought into the new ranks of nobility. I needed stewards of the land, not rats fleeing a sinking ship.

I ended up merely putting the books into piles based on subject matter, and then organizing them into a long line against the wall, as the bookshelves had long since rotted through. I dusted them as best I could with the scraps of cloth I could scrounge up in the room, and then rose to move on to the next office. The man's title had been Minister of Road and Field but I intended to re-brand it _Infrastructure_. We had centuries of bridge building ahead of us, and that was without the repairs on the Castle, rebuilding the Castle Town, or putting the Temple of Time back together.

Link was leaning in the doorway watching me, however, and I consented to being trapped in the room. I folded my hands at my waist and waited for him to speak.

“I’m sorry,” he started, and I sighed.

“Stop.”

He scowled at me.

“Stop apologizing for things you have no control over. Its like apologizing about rain. Or the tides. Or the stupid choices of my father. Or the stupid choices of _your_ father. Save your apologies for things you actually do, so they _mean_ something.”

He reached up with both hands to push his hood back and roughly tugged the tie out of his hair, finger-combing it back and retying it. I seemed to be a new nervous sort of reaction, and frankly I was fascinated by it. He’d never really had a hair out-of-place that I could remember. “It’s just... I don’t know how to explain it.”

“I am willing to listen whenever you want to try, however long it takes.”

He huffed out an exasperated breath. “Look I- fuck it. I’m fucked up. Fucking everything is fucked and I either give too many fucks or not fucking enough.”

I stared at him for a moment, shocked, and then crossed the rest of the distance between us and slapped him as hard as I could.

Which, honestly, hurt me far more than it hurt him. He let it happen, I was sure. He looked my in the eye as I swung, and didn’t flinch at the contact, while my arm immediately hurt from wrist to shoulder.

He clutched the slightly reddened cheek and started to laugh. “And you wonder why I wouldn’t teach you to curse.”

“You just used one word in multiple parts of speech! One word! That is an _amazing word_. It would take me a hundred years to diagram those sentences, and I would _much_ rather have done that than argue with a pig demon for the last century! All of that time, wasted! How could you?”

He leaned all his weight against the door frame as he laughed, and I pushed past him, determined he wouldn’t see the smile that was threatening to crack across my face at actually _hearing him laugh_. He reeled sideways, stepping slightly into the hall, as our shoulders collided. He reached out with one arm, snaking it around my waist and pulling me against him for a hug as he pitched back against the door frame. 

I immediately abandoned any attempt at maintaining the facade of distance and melted into his embrace. I ducked my head against his shoulder and buried my face in his neck and tried to calm the countless nerve endings that _screamed_ with the relief of actually being touched.

“What is this?” He asked. There was an echo of laughter in his voice still, but it was softer, now. Concerned, perhaps, and not really caring hide it.

“What is what?”

“You. You act like you’re drowning.”

I _felt_ like I was drowning. I struggled for a moment to try to find a way to explain.

“The last time I touched a person was when I checked to make sure your heart was still beating, before Purah and Robbie left to carry you to the Shrine of Resurrection. I wasn’t... I wasn’t close with my father. Once my mother died, I wasn’t hugged much, and really only by Mipha and later Urbosa. And then while you were sleeping in the Shrine? I wasn’t corporeal, really; I had to stay ethereal or be burned by... by the pig demon.”

“Let’s keep calling him that, it’s really satisfying to deprive him of a name.”

“Yes, please.”

“So you’re saying you haven't been touched by anyone – or, really, any _thing_ – since I died.”

_You weren’t dead_ , I wanted to say. But that wasn’t the conversation we were having. “Right.”

His arms tightened against me and the little gaps between us vanished. He ran one hand into my hair and pressed the other against the small of my back and I breathed in the scent of home on his collar.

“You have an actual need for me to hug you,” he enunciated carefully, as if spelling out a difficult concept. “An actual physical _need_ for your continued wellbeing.”

I nodded against his neck. I was shaking; my hands were nearly palsied where they clutched at the back of his hood and I couldn’t put into words the mix of relief and near-pain I was experiencing.

“I can do that,” he whispered, and a breath I didn’t realize I was holding rushed out of me. My knees went weak, and he just held me closer.

I don’t know how long we stood there, braced against the doorframe, his hand tangled in my hair and no air between us. He shifted slightly, but his hands didn’t relax their grip so I made no move to separate. I could feel my heart rate slowing, the tension in my shoulders ebbing, fingers and toes easing their desperate clench.

“So you _really_ didn’t mind me waking up last night and half-crushing you in my panic.”

I shook my head as vehemently as I could manage without pulling away from him. I was rewarded with a chuckle I could feel through my chest more than I could hear.

“And if all of that happens again, I wouldn’t be, ah, violating your person or your personal space.”

“What?” I shifted so that I could look at his face. He looked as relieved as I felt. “Is that what you thought?”

He shrugged slightly. “Yes.”

“Fuck personal space.” I stuffed my face back against his neck, for emphasis, and his laugh this time was audible and practically dripping with relief. “Proper usage?”

“Proper usage. Well done, you’re a quick study.”

“It seems there aren’t many ways to improperly use the word.”

“Not many, no.”

“Such a prat, holding out on me like that.”

“Speaking of holding out on you, lunch was done about an hour ago. Are you hungry?”

My stomach grumbled loudly and he laughed again. It was an incredible habit for him to get into, and my heart soared at the thought of Link laughing – loudly and often. He pushed away from the door frame and for a moment I thought he was going to have me hold onto his bracer as he led me back down the hall. He paused, though, and looked at me for a moment. Then he quickly stooped down, braced an arm behind my knees, and swept me into the air. I left my arms around his shoulders and my face buried against his neck and he carried me down the hall.

“I have to step away to get our food, is that-“

“I will suffer through a few moments of solitude,” I assured him, knowing he’d hear the humor in my voice.

He set me down in a mostly-cleaned chair and gave me a very serious sort of bow. “My life remains yours, Princess.”

“If you don’t get better about calling me Zelda, we’re going to run into trouble.”

“You’ll always be _Princess_ to me,” he said, half-teasing, but it soured my mood. From my chair I could just make out the edge of my mother’s throne, peeking out of a store room across the hall. Hyrule wasn’t ruled by a Princess, and even if I changed everything else about our law structure, the descendants of Hylia were biologically bound to a series of rules that were inescapable.

“No,” I told him, aiming for _resolve_ but probably sounding depressed. “No, I won’t.”

He handed me a bowl of soup – still hot from the hearth – and moved a chair over so our legs touched from hips-to-knees as we ate. We didn’t speak through the meal and didn’t break the silence for a long time after we finished, but he stayed within easy reach. He followed me through the other offices and helped me take stock of the tomes and ledgers left behind by the last Ministers of Hyrule. I mentioned that I would need his help choosing new Ministers, and he surprised me by immediately offering up names.

“This Bolson sounds like an interesting character. If you think he’s such a good fit for Infrastructure, I’d love to meet him.”

“He’s in Hateno,” Link replied, and then made a show of looking away. “I was hoping to take you there, anyways.”

“Do you think Impa still has my old clothes? I’m not looking forward to doing much travelling in this dress.”

He turned a brilliant sort of smile at me. “I think we should go ask her.”

“Great, then. That’s our task for tomorrow: get to Kakariko. From there, Hateno.”

I helped him cook dinner – and didn’t ruin it too badly – and he didn’t hesitate to lay down beside me on the blankets I’d suspended from the remains of the Minister of Trade’s bed. It took a bit of rearranging until we were both comfortable, but eventually we were both on our sides, with his arms wrapped around me and his nose at the nape of my neck. His breath would have been maddeningly distracting if I wasn’t trying to catch up on one hundred years of sleep deficit.

“Be nice,” I told the sword.

“What?”

“Not you. It. It’s going to feed you memories and I told it to be nice.”

_I know what I’m doing_ , it said, but its voice was the barest whisper. More than anything else, I got a _feeling_ from it – a righteous sort of superiority, with an undertone of regret.

“Did it listen?”

“I’m sorry, but no.”

Link sighed. “Let’s see what horrors it has for me tonight.”


	3. Spirits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our duo leaves the Castle and travels to Kakariko. Zelda realizes her power has begun to Fade.  
> Includes the ending cutscene of the Champions' spirits departing. 
> 
> A moment of calm to set-up the realization coming in Chapter 4.

He awoke with a wordless shout an hour before midnight, startling me so badly I nearly fell off the bed. He denied any desire to speak of it - shaking his head _no_ when I asked - and pulled me tightly to his chest. I had no complaints about that answer, and fell asleep moments after him, lulled by the slowing of his heartbeat as he relaxed.

He didn’t shout again, but he awoke suddenly, gasping and flailing, three more times.

“I need a way to express my discontent with the sword,” I told him when he woke for the last time, a short while before dawn. He had flatly refused to talk about his dreams the previous three times I’d asked, so I’d told him I would listen if he wanted to vent, and then stopped asking. “I don’t have the proper vocabulary yet.”

“Tell it you think it’s a fucking asshole,” he counseled.

I nodded. “Yes. That feels satisfactory.” I turned to the blade that gleamed in the twilight. “You, dear sword, are a fucking asshole.”

It flashed, as if in reply, but I heard no words at all; just a distinct feeling of smugness laced with regret.

“What did it say?”

I frowned. “Nothing. I used to converse with it, and now I just get the impression that it is confident that what it is doing is right, even if slightly sad that the process if hurting you.”

Link nodded. “That’s what I felt, too.”

“I don’t like that its voice is fading. That implies my _power_ is fading, since I only heard the sword when my power awoke.”

“It could be that I’m interfering,” Link pointed out. “I’ve only had it back for a few days.”

I shrugged. “It’s something to think about on the road.”

It didn’t take us long to pack up, since we weren’t taking much with us from the Castle. The extra blankets were stashed back in the hidden closet, since Link promised me a real bed the next night, even if we didn’t make it all the way to Kakariko.

We stopped frequently, though, so Link could give me quick hugs or just wrap an arm around my shoulders for a moment of reassurance. I felt like I was rapidly regaining my equilibrium – I wasn’t _starving_ anymore, for food or for contact – but even if I didn’t _need_ to be touched, I found I _wanted_ it. It was an easy habit to fall into – allowing my hand to linger on his, pausing to rest my head on his shoulder and him running his fingers through my hair. I wasn’t sure how it would translate into the world outside the Castle but frankly I couldn’t care. There wasn’t anyone out there whose opinion mattered anymore, not about this.

We were out of the Castle before the sun had risen far into the sky, crossing the courtyard while the shadows still hung deep from the walls. We slipped out of the great gates and Link used that rune of magnetism – _Magnesis_ , he called it; I hadn’t gotten to play with it yet – to pull the gates closed behind us.

We stopped at the end of the bridge; something made me turn back. There was a flutter at the back of my mind, a whisper of protest or a bid to wait. I scoured the Castle, the parapets, the courtyard; nothing jumped out at me. Link seemed to see my search and did one of his own, although his gaze remained impassive – whatever I had felt, he hadn’t.

Not the sword, then. Probably not a lingering hint of Malice, as he would have felt it as well. That meant the most likely culprit was a spirit trying to communicate. I focused on that part of my power and there it was: a faint touch of familiar voices. They were blurred together, indistinct, but I could pick out Mipha, Urbosa, Revali, and Daruk. There were words, but they blended together into a susurrus of congratulations and farewell. Then, they were gone, and one voice remained.

 _Know you are my pride and joy. Take my blessing with you, wherever your road may lead you_.

Then the spirit of my father faded, and my mind was empty of any thoughts but my own.

Link cocked his head at me and I turned away from the Castle to follow him into the once-great Hyrule Field. For the very first time, the Castle behind me stood truly empty.

We saw Saria galloping toward us in the distance, noticeably less timid after more than two days spent freely roaming unmolested through the tall grasses. I let my mind dwell on what my father had said as I gazed out over the Field towards the approaching horse.

“The sword is putting the jumbled memories back into order,” Link said, softly, as we watched the horse slow into an ostentatious prance as she drew near. “But it’s doing it backwards. I started the night with the deaths of the other Champions, and then worked back through to the day I met them. I got through everyone but Mipha last night.”

I wanted to tell him he was handling it better, but that seemed to imply he hadn’t been doing well before. I wanted to tell him that he seemed calmer today, more collected, more _himself_ ; but again, all of those implied that he was _less_ before, and that was the last thing I wanted him to think. I listened to him, at a loss, and grasped for something appropriate to say once he fell silent.

“So, if the sword is capable of logic, perhaps you’ll get your memories of Mipha tonight?” It seemed the safest option.

Link shrugged, not taking his eyes off the still-approaching horse. “Possibly, since I met her first. I feel like I almost have it put together, like just taking that mess and putting it in order gave me context for most everything else in that timeframe. I actually remember meeting Daruk, instead of just remembering him telling the story of how we met. I know I spent many years with the Zora, and I’ve got flashes of those memories, but it’s still jumbled. Everything before that is a mess of light and shadow, flashes of faces and places. Soon, though. I feel like I’ll have it all together soon.”

“I’m glad, for your sake,” I said, sincerely, and he spared me a smile in the brief moment between my statement and Saria plowing into him.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he laughed from where he sprawled on the ground, gently deflecting her nose out of his face. “I missed you, too. You have to let me up if you want an apple.”

Apples seemed to be secondary to greeting Link, which amused me to no end. She bent her head down and nuzzled into him in a frankly adorable show of affection that was completely out of character for every horse I’d ever known.

Eventually she helped him to his feet and then attempted to stuff her face into his pack. With everything I’d seen him pull out of it, I wasn’t sure she couldn’t actually fit in there. Link pushed her away, laughing, and rummaged through the pack for a suitable snack. He handed me a cane of sugar with a wink, while Saria was distracted by the fruit.

“Zelda’s got something for you,” he told the horse as she started prodding at his pack again.

Saria gave me some serious side eye until she realized I was holding a large hunk of sugar cane. I exchanged the sweet for a head butt to my chest and an open invitation to rub her nose.

“We’re going to visit Paya,” Link told her and she took a dancing sort of step to turn and face East.

“That’s... uncanny,” I laughed. “I don’t know whether to be amazed or concerned.”

Link nodded sagely. “Both. Would you rather walk or ride, Princess?”

I shot him an aggravated look for the continued use of my title, which he responded to with a shrug and a comic twist to his mouth.

“Walk,” I answered. “I can’t get used to being in my body again if I don’t use it.”

He shot me a dark sort of look but held his silence. I got the impression he had a completely inappropriate comment that he’d chosen to keep to himself; any other time I would have been compelled to pursue it.

“I heard spirits again, as we paused on the bridge,” I told him as we walked in the bright morning sun. “The Champions, and then my father.”

He didn’t say anything, but his look said, _Oh? And?_

“They were... indistinct. I got the impression they were in the Castle, maybe somewhere around the Sanctum, which is far closer than they have been when they spoke to me in the past. It seems odd they weren't clearer, since they were so much _nearer_. I could make out their individual voices, but not anything they said. Or, rather, I could tell it was Mipha and Urbosa and Revali and Daruk speaking to me, but the words were muddled. And then they were gone and it was just my father. His voice I could discern, but even then, it was faint. He said little, and when he left, my mind was completely alone.”

He pitched an eyebrow up but stayed silent. If he’d been behind me instead of beside me, I might have been able to confuse this with countless conversations we’d had a century before. The almost- _deja vu_ was unspeakably comforting.

“Father said... well. That he was proud of me, more or less. That’s not what has me concerned. Your reclaiming the Master Sword could explain why the voice of the sword would fade for me; it is almost definitely the explanation for why its voice has changed. But your awakening does not explain the fading of spirits’ voices... and now that I phrase it as such, I’m convinced my concern about the sword is an aspect of the same issue. I heard voices from the spirit realm before your fall, before my awakening; my Grandmother was particularly adept at it, there is no reason it should fade. I worry that my control of the Golden Power might also wane, and then I would be left as I was before.”

“Do you... _need_ this Golden Power?” Link asked. There was a tone in his voice I couldn’t quite place. “That’s what you used to destroy the Guardians when I fell, the great sphere you created to seal away the Calam- the pig demon?”

“It is what I used, yes. What it is, we shall speak of another time. But as to whether I _need_ it...?” I stopped to consider the question. The Guardians had been stripped of Malice, and were Robbie’s problem now (whether he liked it or not). I had Link back, and he was more than capable of handling any monsters remaining in the countryside; we would need to begin training up soldiers to keep the goblin folk contained to the more remote reaches of Hyrule, but we were safe enough to travel on our own. And after all, the fundamental reason for me to use the Golden Power was to seal away Calamity Ganon, which was, Goddesses willing, not a problem for another ten thousand years or more.

Looking around, though; there were the remains of homesteads dotting the landscape around us. The dead far outnumbered the living in Hyrule, and many had never been given their last rites. If my ability to speak to spirits was tied in with the Golden Power, then it would be immeasurably helpful in the years to come. I was the High Priestess of Hylia; the title had never meant much, feeling more like an honorary moniker that I’d assumed with the death of my mother. When the time came to reconsecrate the Sanctum in Hyrule Castle or the Temple of Time, itself, some measure of power would be necessary. And what if something should happen to Link, or he was called away, or we were separated for some reason? Some means of protecting myself was essential, although I supposed I could always ask the premier warrior in the realm for a few self-defense tips.

I didn’t particularly like the idea of speaking to spirits, but it was expected of me. It was my tie to my mother, my grandmother, and the long line of women stretching back all the way to Hylia.

“I don’t like to admit it, but yes. Yes, I think it is necessary. I am not particularly eager to use it, but it was such a critical part of my identity – my _duty_ – for so long that I can’t rightfully turn my back on it. I owe it to myself – to _Hyrule_ – to do what I can to maintain as much of my power as possible.”

Link’s expression was carefully neutral, but I could have sworn he looked, for just half a heartbeat, like I had said something that pained him. I couldn’t imagine what he might have misinterpreted, and I had no idea how to ask.

He was quiet for the rest of the day. It was a companionable silence, I thought, with Saria on one side of Link and I on the other. He was unsettled, it seemed, and lost in thought, but his fingers stayed twined through mine and it was such an improvement over the last time we’d walked through the Field that I couldn’t take anything but hope from it.

We walked due East, across the crumbling Rebonae bridge, and followed the Hylia River south until we were beyond the wetlands. The terrain began to curve naturally southeasterly as the elevation rose, and soon we were walking into the Pillars of Levia on the road to Kakariko.

“This looks like nothing I remember,” I admitted as we entered the narrow canyon.

“The Sheikah spent many years moving stone to try to give themselves some defense against Ganon, should anything else go wrong,” he answered, the first words I’d heard in hours. “They didn’t have much choice, since they’d collapsed the old road as soon as the Calam- _pig demon_ awoke. This canyon was designed specifically to funnel mounted bokoblins into death traps. The cliff we rappelled down is unrecognizable now, and all the old catwalks are gone; if the Guardians began to swarm again, they would have a hard time finding the village.”

“Why do you think Impa did that?”

He shrugged. “Either she was leaned on by the rest of the Sheikah – because I know she had total faith in you – or she had some other reason. She said she collapsed the original canyon at the behest of her grandmother. Maybe it was just a memory she didn’t want.”

That last statement was too much for me to parse; I squeezed his fingers gently and let it go.

Kakariko was exactly as I had remembered it, and yet so fundamentally different as to be unrecognizable. The buildings were untouched by time, carefully maintained by a proud populace. But the people! There were an eighth, a _tenth_ as many people. Houses contained one or two individuals when they used to have full families of multiple generations. It didn’t look as though any building was using its second story, and the children were outnumbered by the elderly by three or four to one.

The Sheikah, it seemed, were dying.

They were taking their measure of me, too. As I took stock of the town and the odd stillness that filled its streets, the people of Kakariko came to their doorways to watch us as we passed. I realized that every eye, at some point, drifted down to where my fingers were yet laced with Link’s.

I could retrieve my hand, for the sake of... what? Appearances? Avoiding gossip? Side-stepping awkward conversations?

I’d made that choice on the field of Fort Hateno a hundred years before; I was far too gone to consider turning back now. I adjusted my hand so that our palms were pressed together, our fingers interlocked. Link shifted his arm so that we stood a bit closer together, and then squeezed my hand briefly. I felt a flush in my cheeks but it was nothing compared to the sudden lightness of my heart.

He could have let go, shifted differently, added distance; but no. He'd pulled me _closer_. The implications made my head spin, but I could only hope he still felt the same for me. We had all the time in the world, now. Eventually, we would get it in the open, and maybe we could get to where I wanted to be.

I didn’t need Link to lead me to where Impa lived; it was the same house she’d occupied a century before, newly inherited from her grandmother on the day the Calamity struck. There was a young woman on the porch and two guards at the entryway at the base of the stairs, and a painter across the way feverish capturing our entrance. Link paused to tuck Saria’s reins up in her bridle, to keep her from getting tangled in anything, and then patted her shoulder to set her free to roam. She wandered over towards the Shrine to Hylia and took a drink from the brook as Link drew me towards the guards waiting at attention.

“Cado, Dorian,” Link said, nodding to the two men. “I have a distinguished guest who has waited a very long time to see Impa again. Permission to pass?”

I had, quite literally, never heard Link ask permission from anyone short of my father or I, and never worded as anything more than a courtesy. The question did a number on these two Sheikah, as well; they immediately stepped even farther to either side, and bowed deeply, in unison.

Link murmured a word of thanks and then led me up the stairs.

The girl at the top was watching us with tears in her eyes. I supposed this was Paya, the granddaughter of Impa that Link had mentioned before. The way she was looking from my face to Link’s face to our hands and then back up to my face and then around another circuit told me more than words could about her feelings for my appointed knight.

It was a muddled mess of emotion for me to pick through, personally. I believed that Link loved me – I had been sure of it before his fall, and he had done little to shake my faith since our reunion. It was easy to tumble into doubt, though; Mipha had long misconstrued his affection, could I have made the same mistake? Paya clearly saw the same things in Link that I did; I was long since resigned to the fact that women all over Hyrule were ankle-over-elbow in love with him. I couldn’t fault her for her attraction, but I wasn’t sure if what I felt was guilt or sympathy over it. Did she think that he had simply chosen a Princess over a commoner, did she lose sleep over the unfairness of it all? Did she resent me for surviving one hundred years and returning to claim him?

And, goodness, when did I get so presumptuous?

His fingers tightened again on my hand, and this time the pressure stayed. He shifted his arm again, drawing me tight to his side and slightly behind him; it felt proprietary more than protective, maybe even a little possessive.  _Right, that’s why I was daring to presume_. Paya took a deep breath and stiffened her shoulders, as Link smiled at her.

“Master Link, you’ve returned! And dare I hope this is Princess Zelda, herself?”

“We should see your Grandmother first; let's see if her memory can confirm that for you. Is she awake?”

It was subtle, that rearranging of roles. If I hadn’t spent my life mired in politics I might have missed it; a placement of Impa in-between Link and Paya, a layer of protocol inserted into what might have been pure friendship before. Paya, surprisingly, caught it too, and she exhaled sharply and then nodded. “Of course. She will be thrilled to see you. Please, let me show you in.”

She didn’t wait for a reply, but quickly pushed open the door. It seemed she’d run right out of poise, as she paused long enough to announce Link and then scurried over to a flight of stairs to disappear out of sight.

“A great darkness has lifted from Hyrule,” a thin voice said from inside. I entered the house at Link’s back and couldn’t immediately see the speaker. “Is it too much to hope that you’ve retrieved our Princess?”

I stepped around to stand next to Link, but neither of us made any move to free our hands.

There was a tiny woman, bowed and shriveled with age, kneeling upon a comically tall pile of pillows in the center of the room. Paper lanterns hung on either side of her, and her traditional Sheikah hat was quite possibly bigger than she was.

Hidden in the creases and lines of her face, though, were eyes I would know anywhere, and a smile that had warmed some of my darkest days.

“Impa,” I breathed, and the old woman’s eyes fluttered closed.

“Zelda,” she whispered, and I slipped free of Link’s grasp to dart across the room. I wrapped my arms around her diminutive form and hugged her as tightly as I dared. “Oh, Impa, we did it. _You_ did it. You did everything I ever asked of you and more, _oh_ I am so glad to see you again.”

“I was halfway convinced you’d look like me when we finally got you out of the Castle,” she chuckled, and a sliver of the old steel was still in her voice. “One hundred years later and you haven’t aged a day.”

“I’ve aged _three_ days,” I countered, and she laughed again.

“Oh, child, I am so proud of you. So, so proud of you. You’ve done these old bones a great service. I can rest easily now, knowing my task is done.”

“Don’t you dare,” Link said, having come up to stand behind me. I felt his hand come to rest on the small of my back and knew Impa would read as much into the gesture as I did.

Her eyebrows lifted, but she didn’t sway from the topic at hand. “Dispatched of his sacred duty and already ordering around old women! Ha! No, don’t you worry about me. I can rest easy, but it won’t be today. Tomorrow is always another day, but today, I am young again.”

“Avoid mirrors,” Link counseled, and Impa slapped one knee as she laughed.

“Do you see any in here? Ha! Someday I’ll slip free and you’ll all be stuck dealing with Purah by yourselves, but not today, my Princess. Not today.”

“Impa, I have... I have _so many questions_ ,” I confessed, dropping to my knees in front of her. “About my power and my mother and my path forward. Please, may I-“

“Link! Go see what trouble you can find in town. Give the Princess and I time to catch up. There’s a good lad.”

Link rolled his eyes, but did as he was told. He swept Impa a graceful bow and then leaned over to me. “I will be close by. Impa was robbed by Yiga recently; she’s gotten soft in her dotage.”

“Out!” the Sheikah leader bellowed, in the voice of her youth, and Link chuckled as he showed himself to the door.

“Yiga?” I asked as the door closed behind him. “Here?”

Impa sighed. “It is true. But it is behind us, thanks in no small part to Master Link. I cannot believe that was one of your many questions, though.”

I shook my head. Before I could speak again, Impa turned her head slightly and pitched her voice to carry, “You can come back down, Paya child. He’s gone.”

“I didn’t... HMPH!”

Paya came quickly down the stairs, face clear of any sign of her outburst. “It is honor to meet you, Princess Zelda. Grandmother has spoken highly of your sacrifice and dedication my entire life.”

I gave her the warmest smile I could conjure, not knowing whether or not she was the jealous type and if I should anticipate a knife in my back – literally or figuratively. She was a Sheikah, after all.

“Well said, child. Now, come. Sit. Listen to Zelda and I; you will learn much as we catch up.”

“First,” I said, as Paya shifted some cushions into place nearby and before Impa could direct the conversation. “Link left all our gear here, one hundred years ago, in our ill-fated flight to the Castle. You kept his tunic safe all this time. Please, Impa... for the love of Hylia herself, _please_ tell me you have my clothes. If nothing else, I would commit atrocities to have my boots back.”

The ancient woman’s face split wide with a wicked sort of grin. “ _Did I keep your clothes_. I got old, Zelda, I didn’t become somebody else. I know how hard it is to break in good boots! Paya, before you get too comfortable, run and fetch the cedar chest under my bed, the one I never let you look in as a child. You’re finally getting your wish to snoop.”

As Paya leapt to her feet and darted off, Impa and I sat and smiled at each other, affection both remembered and reflected.

“I missed you,” I said.

“Not as much as I missed you,” she countered. “Now, while we’re waiting for Paya; where did you want to start?”

“Mother,” I answered immediately. “And her power. What, exactly, could she do?”

Impa sighed, and over the course of the afternoon, recalled every tidbit she could about my mother. She told me how my grandmother was better with spirits, but my mother could summon the golden light almost at will. Impa believed it was because Grandmother was more closely acquainted with death than Mother was, while Mother was more deeply in love with life. The golden flash I had seen in Mother’s face, that day while she knelt in prayer, was because of her love for _me_ , and not anything granted in dedication to the Goddess Hylia.

“Your Grandmother’s power had faded greatly by the time of her passing. The spirits were background murmurs in a crowded room; present but indistinct. Your Mother had no such waning, but she was still so young when we lost her.”

“So my power _is_ fading...”

“You’ve had it for a century, child,” Impa chided, gently. “And you used it far more than any other before you, channeling the Goddess for a hundred years.”

I sighed and changed the subject, inquiring instead about the events of those hundred years. I was not at peace with losing the power I had fought so hard for, not when there was still so much I needed to do!  I let the thought float in the back of my mind as Impa narrated to me the names and dispositions of the leaders I had only a general knowledge of from my years watching the world. Riju’s mother had been a few years older than I, and became Chief shortly after the Calamity struck; the Gerudo were nearly as long-lived as the Sheikah. There had been four Goron Chiefs since the time of Daruk, and _six_ Rito Elders, as the winged folk had lives as fast as their flights. Dorephan, of course, remained; the Zora, we agreed, would be the best place for me to go to begin the process of restoring Hylia’s heirs to the stewardship of Hyrule.

“But for now, you need a meal and a soft bed and more time to heal your heart. And I - ha! - I will soon need a nap. You might not have noticed, but I’m _old_.”

“I had no idea, Impa.”

She chortled and waved me towards the door. “Go bathe, Princess, and we’ll burn that dress. If you really want another white dress to pray in-“

“Hylia can hear my prayers in boots and pants,” I interrupted, and headed up the stairs with Impa’s laughter in the air behind me.

When I came back down, she had taken a moment to catch her breath and sip some tea to restore her voice. I came to a halt in front of her, comfortable once more in broken-in boots and my own Champion-blue tunic, and her eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, child. It’s like no time has passed at all. You truly haven’t aged a day.”

“I aged _three_ ,” I reminded her, and her tears faded into laughter.

“Tell me, were you aware of the time passing? Hylia saved your youth, did she shelter your mind as well?”

“In a manner of speaking,” I admitted. “I was aware of the passage of time, but only peripherally. I knew it had been one hundred years, but it didn’t _feel_ like one hundred years. It was like you said would happen with Mother, when she prayed, and hours would go by and she would swear it was only minutes, if not seconds. I lost years in the span of a single thought.”

“I could say the same,” Impa said softly. “Time moved swiftly for me, as well, albeit in a different manner. I was fifty last week, and seventy-five only yesterday. I know not where the years have gone.”

“The last few months have been... taxing. It was much harder to wait for salvation when I could watch it coming ever closer. Once Link woke up, time slowed intolerably, although still it passed faster than in reality.”

“Time is forever relative, child,” Impa countered. “Your entire life will be full of moments that span centuries and hours that pass in a single breath. Hold that lesson dear, and be sure to live in every moment.”

“Yes, Impa,” I agreed with a smile.

“Good. Now. Get out and let an old lady nap. You’ve got the whole village to meet, and by now they all know your name.”

She wasn’t wrong.

I swung open her door at stopped at the top of the stairs to take stock of the village below. There were two small children – girls, both – who leaped to their feet when they saw me and darted off in opposite directions. Lookouts, most likely. The two guards were still there – Cado and Dorian, Link had said – and I could see a group of people off to the left, up the hill towards the Shrine and Great Fairy Spring. Beyond that, the town was quiet – far quieter than Kakariko had ever been in my memory.

I descended the stairs, reveling in the feel of _boots_ and _pants_ and _belts_ and everything else that would make walking the length and width of Hyrule infinitely easier to manage. I had always felt like the girl in the white dress was someone I was _not_ , that the real Zelda was the woman who would someday earn her Champion Blue.

And I had; I finally felt like the color belonged on me. We’d killed Ganon, we’d banished the Calamity, I’d tapped into the Golden Power and sealed away the darkness. We’d fumbled our way into victory, and countless lives were lost, but _by the Goddess_ we were victorious.

It was hard to focus on that when places like Kakariko were mere echoes of the past.

“Which of you is Cado and which of you is Dorian?” I asked at the bottom of the stairs.

“He’s Dorian, and I’m Cado,” the one on my left answered immediately. “Are you truly the same Princess Zelda from one hundred years ago?”

“I am,” I affirmed softly. “Much like Link, I’m a bit of a relic. It’s going to take me far longer than it took him to find my place, I suspect.”

They both nodded eagerly and I gestured up the road. “Is it safe to assume he’s involved in that fracas?”

Two more nodding heads, although this time Cado seemed envious and Dorian exasperated.

“I will go see what trouble he’s found, and hopefully meet more of the Sheikah. I will see you again, I’m sure.”

I walked up the road, slowly becoming aware of the _noise_ coming from the group of Sheikah at the top of the hill. My arrival went completely unnoticed once I reached the crowd, and I skirted along the outside to see what had everyone’s attention.

Link was stripped down to just his linen undershirt and pants, boots and socks and tunic and hood and assorted gear all discarded in a neat pile under the roof of a sort of open-air shed. There were four Sheikah nursing various injuries sitting on the fence nearby, and several more standing in line, each one holding two weapons.

One for them, and one for Link.

He was fighting the whole town, one by one.

Cado and Dorian’s reactions suddenly made much more sense.

A woman strode up as I settled in to watch, tossing Link a blunted spear before brandishing one of her own. Link shook his head and laughed softly. “You want to reconsider this one.”

“You are bested only by Zora in spears,” the Sheikah replied. “If I am not to learn from you, to whom shall I turn?”

Link shrugged and spun the spear across the back of his hand. He set the butt on the ground and nodded once.

The Sheikah darted at him, lightning quick, but Link shifted his hip just enough to evade, spun his spear up to knock hers aside, and then they were moving too fast for me to follow. For what it was worth, the Sheikah seemed to hold her own far better than the fellows on the fence, losing her weapon rather than her blood. The spear was ripped from her hands and snapped in half on the ground by the impact. Link tossed her his spear and then put his hands out in front of him before nodding for her to continue.

If she was offended at his offer to fight unarmed, she didn’t show it. She launched at him once more, but within a matter of seconds he had her spear and she was careening across the hard-packed soil in a painful looking tumble. She pushed to her feet and Link threw her the spear once more. She took it, bowed, and then took a seat on the fence.

A huge man walked up with two double-bladed axes just as Link’s lazy scan of the crowd caused him to notice me.

“Princess,” he said, surprised. The crowd immediately stilled to an expectant silence as a dozen pairs of eyes turned my way.

“Don’t stop on my account,” I said into the sudden hush. “I haven’t gotten to watch you spar in, well... I guess _ages_ isn’t much of an exaggeration.”

It didn’t earn the laugh I’d aimed for, but I did see several smiles. It could have gone worse.

“I have no desire to get my ass kicked in front of the fucking Princess,” somebody muttered from the quickly-deteriorating line. “Watch your mouth, man,” someone hissed.

“We’ll have to continue this another time,” Link said, tossing the heavy axe back to the big man who’d provided it. “I can’t deprive the lady of her tour guide.”

I sized up the crowd and took a gamble. “I have a name, asshole. Surely you know it by now?”

A nearly oppressive silence reigned for the span of six heartbeats, and then the entire group of Sheikah burst out laughing as one. Link was elbowed repeatedly as he snatched up his gear and made his way through the crowd towards me. He tucked the pile of clothes under his right arm, held his boots in the same hand, and held out his left hand to me. I immediately took it, and allowed him to lead me away.

“We have rooms in the inn,” he said conversationally, as the riotous laughter faded into the distance behind us. “Koko wants to cook you dinner, and you ought to let her; she’s actually quite good. There’s a Korok right next to Dorian that I’ll introduce you to, if you want to start seeing them – and think long and hard about whether you do, they’re mischievous little beasties – and Pikango the painter might wither up and die if he doesn’t meet you soon.”

“And you?”

He glanced over at me. “What about me?”

“Those are all things you recommend for me to do. What would you like to do?”

He twisted his mouth briefly and then his expression went neutral. “I’ve been here before. It’s your turn to experience Kakariko.”

“Link, that’s not-“

“You were a prisoner for a hundred years,” he interrupted softly. “You need to catch up.”

He was right – he’d been running around Hyrule freely for some time now, and I was only a few days out of a century-long confinement. There was something underlying the words that I knew I needed to clarify, but I wasn’t sure what was fueling this recurring mood. Whatever he had been angry about on the Field after Ganon’s fall had never been dealt with, I was sure; his general outlook was improving but there was still much he wasn’t telling me.

But there had always been much he hadn’t told me. It was foolish to think a century-long nap would suddenly make him more forthcoming.

“Koko’s for dinner then,” I agreed as cheerfully as I could manage. “And then I will gladly follow your lead. I have utmost faith in the strength of your recommendations.”

“Thanks,” he said, with an odd sort of tone to his voice. But then I was sitting at a table with a little girl named Cottla, with a landscape painter swooning in the distance every time I glanced his way. The people of Kakariko starting coming by to introduce themselves, and I quickly lost track of names. I learned smiles and hand shakes and brief biographies but simply could not retain all the names.

“You must tell me your name every time we meet,” I said over and over again. “I have so many names to learn and I’m sure to muck them up. Remind me until I remember, promise you will!”

They made – and began keeping – the promise immediately, eager to help me learn their names and sympathetic to the overwhelming amount of information I was suddenly receiving. I despaired of keeping everything straight...

...but I did. Somehow, once I had someone’s name and face matched in my mind, it stayed there. The Sheikah were a homogenous sort of people, but there were differences in eyes and heights and faces and dispositions and voices and countless other features that made the pale-skinned-pale-haired folk easy to tell apart.

Cottla had to get off to bed fairly early in the evening, and I decided I should follow suit; I was unaccustomed to exertion and had walked more that day than I probably should have. I made my farewells and crossed the street to the inn, more than halfway expecting Link to follow me. When I reached the door and realized I hadn’t heard his footsteps, I turned back.

He was sitting at one of the tables across the way, where Koko’s cooking fire slowly cooled to embers, sitting shoulder to shoulder with Paya.

The firelight was unforgiving; I could make out little of their features and less of what expressions they might bear. There were others walking about, so the chances of me looking into their conversation without being harshly scrutinized were slim indeed.

I walked through the door, slid it shut behind me, and asked the narcoleptic innkeeper for the key to my room.

The private room at the inn at Kakariko hadn’t been used in generations, but had been turned over that day, when Link and I were spotted walking up the Slope of Sahasra. The space was square in shape, but cut into three triangles; the sitting room was twice the size of the two bedrooms. A single hearth warmed all three rooms, positioned in the middle with a heavy grate and screen on each of the three sides. The bedrooms were sparsely furnished, but the sitting room had a table with three chairs around it near the window, and a single overstuffed armchair perched in front of the hearth.

I chose a bedroom at random – the one to the right – and dropped my sparse belongings inside the door. The bed was turned down and tempting, but I only lingered long enough to tug off my boots before returning to the sitting room. I angled the armchair slightly so I could see the door and then settled in by the fire to wait for Link.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you missed it on my tumblr, I was contacted yesterday by a woman I never thought to actually meet. My mom's mom was forced to give up a daughter for adoption 3 years before my mom was born, and my mom has spent her entire life wishing to meet her big sister. Thanks to a DNA test and the magic of the internet, my mom's long-lost half-sister found me and I was able to facilitate the single most amazing phone call of all time.  
> Now I have four new cousins and an auntie to meet, and as the family genealogist I've got five eager students of family history to give all my ancestry information to.  
> And I'm making this announcement to a few hundred strangers via a story I'm publishing for free on the internet.  
> It is an amazing fucking time to be alive, my friends. Never lose your sense of wonder!


	4. Not Your Fault

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we finally get a crack in that armor.
> 
> *
> 
> The theme for this chapter is "realization," and is meant to be the mirror for the Yiga chapter in Calm Waters Run Deep.

I’m not sure when I fell asleep, but the fire had burned low and the room was dark when I felt myself being lifted from the chair.

“You should be in bed, Princess,” Link said softly as he carried me into a bedroom. “I did not realize you were waiting up.”

I fought for consciousness as he tucked me into the extra-soft bedding.

“You need to sleep,” I managed to say as he moved to withdraw.

“I've slept enough over the last few nights,” he countered. “I will keep watch, since I had the poor taste to remind everyone of the Yiga.”

“No,” I argued, pushing myself upright and fighting back the fog in my mind. “You need to sleep, Link. We believe the sword will give you back your memories of Mipha tonight and I-“

“I do not want to sleep,” he interrupted harshly. “I do not need it.”

I stood and held myself up with a steadying hand to a bedpost. “You’re so close to being done with this business of rearranging memories, though! You must-“

“Do not presume to know what is best for me!” he hissed, and the last of the sleep was seared from my mind as I jolted fully awake in the face of his ire. “You argue with the sword over its actions but both of you are dedicated to depriving me of any choice. If I’m to die in obscurity, let it at least be one of blissful ignorance!”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“It wasn’t enough to let my failure stand,” he said, and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see the darkened circles beneath his eyes, the slump to his shoulders. He was exhausted – likely still from the fight in the Castle and the weeks of grueling exertion leading up to it – but he was _dead set_ on staying awake. “I had to be _resurrected_ and forced to relive every defeat individually, every time I got a memory back. It wasn’t enough for me to die, I had to be revived and _killed again_.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Why won’t you tell me what happened to Saria, Zelda?”

He wasn’t making any sense. His pupils were dilated, his head moving slightly as his eyes darted around the room. There was something _wrong_ with him, and I wasn’t thinking quickly enough to put it all together.

“You don’t want to know!”

“Would I ask you if I didn’t want to know?”

“When you _told me_ ,” I countered, “you said you didn’t wish the memory on anyone! Does that sound like the sort of thing I would want to be responsible for telling you? I thought I could spare you, this time around!”

“This time around? There is no _this time around_! Ganon is dead, the Calamity is gone, the moblins and other ‘folk are already fleeing back into the mountains. I am already obsolete, Zelda. I have only to put the damn sword back and then the world can continue on without me.”

”Is that what this is? Is the Sword telling you again about everything it doesn’t know?”

“The Sword is the only one telling me _anything_ right now!”

“She was killed!” I cried out, and Link’s eyes grew wide and locked on me. “You were children, you did everything together. You climbed the Great Plateau together. You were _intended_. And then one night she was cornered by bokos and didn’t come home. So you – a _child_ , Link, you were a _child_ – spent two nights waiting for the adults of your village to find her and when they failed, you left to find her yourself. You killed the bokos and you brought her home and _she died anyways_.”

He was breathing erratically, frowning at me as if my face had suddenly become unfamiliar, and then his eyes flew wide again and he gasped. He leaned back and stared through me, stared at some point miles behind my head and a hundred years in the past. I gripped the bed post, _hard_ , and I waited.

After seconds or minute or hours or _days_ – it could have been another hundred years, the way the silence stretched – Link stumbled forward with a coughing sort of exhale and then turned a wide-eyed stare of disbelief at me.

“You didn’t- You didn’t want- You didn’t want me to-“

He gasped again and then seemed to collapse in on himself. “Great Goddesses, Zelda, you were right.”

I stepped forward and caught him as he stumbled another step forward, got my arms around his chest and helped direct him to the side of the bed. He sat down heavily and let his head sink into his hands.

“I didn’t want this.”

“I’m so sorry, Link.”

“Naydru’s Mercy would have been to keep this from me.”

“I tried, Link, I swear to you, I tried to give you the blessing of ignorance. When you told me what you’d named the horse-“

“Saria!” he breathed. “Oh, no, I named her _Saria_.”

“You named her Saria,” I confirmed softly.

“Saria fucking _loved_ horses,” he whispered. “She wouldn’t mind.”

“Link, I-“

“What else, Zelda?”

“Your pardon?”

“What else do I not want to know?”

I shook my head, confident he would catch the motion from the corner of his eye. “I think you have the worst of it. I gave you what I could, with the pictures in the Sheikah slate. If I had taken a picture inside your house in Faron or even been to your mother’s house at Lake Illumeni, I would have left them in the slate for you to find, I swear to you.”

“There... was a picture of us. I was asleep, on the hill, after you tried to make me eat a frog. Why... why wasn’t that picture left in the slate for me? You left another, of just the hill, and it made me remember the day, and the frog, but... I wasn’t ever sure if the rest of it was real or just wishful thinking.”

“I deleted it that day, when I was afraid of Robbie seeing it,” I told him, and his head sunk a fraction of an inch closer to the floor. “I regretted it bitterly, when I was standing in Kakariko with Purah waiting for me to give her the slate, to take to the Shrine with your... your body. I didn’t have time to add anything. And then you woke up and they weren’t there... I was so worried you wouldn't get any memory back at all, despite all our efforts."

“What else did you do for me?” he asked. “After I’d fallen, the things I can’t remember because I didn’t see?

“I gave Impa your tunic, as you know,” I answered. “I asked her to make sure your sacrifice was remembered. She did the painting of her own volition, but I think she did it because of my explanation of the pictures in the slate. And the Sword... The Sword told me I had to distract Ganon, keep him from finding you, give the Shrine time to work. So, once I placed it back in its pedestal in the forest, I traveled to the Castle to-“

“You challenged the Calamity, alone, to keep him from finding me?” He asked, lifting his head to blink at me blearily. Great Goddesses, but he looked so tired.

“Well, to keep him from tearing Hyrule apart looking for you. But... yes. And I would have stayed there twice as long - for millennia if I had to – if it meant you were safe.”

“I wasn’t worth it,” he said. I wasn’t positive he actually directed the statement at me.

“You woke up with nothing and made your way to the Castle and saved me,” I reminded him. “You are worth every second.”

He shook his head, miserably, and I grabbed his bicep with both hands. “Do you remember? The day the... the _pig demon_ woke up? You were laughing with Impa as you thinned out your packs and I didn’t understand how you could be so _calm_ when all I could feel was shock and panic. Do you remember what you said to me?”

He nodded, and I waited. After a long pause, he tipped his face up and quoted it to me softly.

“We were born for this, Princess. Every fiber of your being was created  _specifically for this_. Every trial and every action of your life, of every life before now, has brought you to this precise moment. There is no one better suited for this task anywhere, in all of time. Just you. You cannot fail. You must only be yourself.”

I allowed myself a moment to wonder how a man with memory problems had quoted it so perfectly; I had expected a summary, a paraphrase. He kept speaking, though, and answered the question I would not have dared to ask.

“My mother said that to me, more or less, the day she left Deya Village. That memory, that _admonishment_ , colored every choice I made until the day I fell and forgot it. Much like you, I protested; I told her I didn’t know who I was, and she told me to go find out. It was... like she knew. Like she’d seen that exact moment in the future and told me precisely what I needed to tell you.”

“More likely, you recognized your mother’s wisdom and chose to share it with me at the precise moment I most needed it,” I countered. I didn’t like the idea that I was usurping this memory of his mother, that he was skewing his earliest memories to be _not about him_.

He wasn’t mad at me about Saria anymore, about the memories. But there was still something deeper, something even more fundamental that was bothering him. I felt like it was close, that I had everything I needed to put it together and _help him_ , but it eluded me still.

“I wish I could tell her that,” he sighed.

“We could find her, if you want,” I offered. He slowly turned his head towards me, pure incredulity on his face. “I haven’t completely lost the ability to speak to spirits yet. She was probably buried near her home at Lake Illumeni. We could go to Tabantha and I could try to find her for you, while I still can.”

“While you still can...?”

“I mentioned earlier... I fear my power is fading. There are hundreds – nay, thousands! – of unburied dead from the Calamity, and I could do much to spirits to rest. That is why I fear my power waning.”

Link turned his face away from me, closing his eyes as if what I said had pained him – again, like he had the last time we had spoke of my power. “The power you need,” he clarified softly, as if afraid of the answer, “is the power to speak to spirits? Like my mother.”

“Yes, in part. But I also need the rest – the Golden Power would be a simple way to prove my identity, my heritage, should that be questioned in the days to come. The sword remains our best source of information on the Calamity, and we will need to set plans in motion for his next incursion, lest our descendants be caught unaware. If I cannot speak to the Sword – especially if you still intend to put it back! – we will be at a distinct disadvantage comparatively.”

“Do you think you might... need the power to defend yourself? Like at Fort Hateno.”

“No, of course not. There is no Malice left to use it against, as far as we’ve seen. And you have long since mastered the means to defeat the Guardians, should any malfunction. Now that I have you at my side I have no need for that aspect of the power. I wouldn’t mind a bit of combat instruction from you, in case we come across moblins or lynels in our travels, since they’ve had a century to grow and mature unchecked. When you were first teaching me about them, there were no silver or even black bokoblins to use as examples, and now that I’ve had a taste of self-defense I find the alternative unpleasant.”

He breathed out a shuddering sort of sigh and I tightened my hands on his arm. “What? What did I say?”

“I... feel like I am looking at the world through some sort of distorted window,” he answered, haltingly. “I can see everything clearly, so I don’t realize its... twisted.”

“Twisted how?”

He was quiet for a long time, staring at the floor. I eased my hands off his arm and placed one on the bed, one on his knee, as I turned slightly to face him. I was willing to wait for him to find his words, and it was important to show him as much.

After several long minutes of silence, he laid his palm upon my hand on his knee and curled his fingers around mine. “Did you see me speaking to Paya tonight?”

It wasn’t what I expected, but neither was anything else, anymore. “Yes.”

Something about my tone amused him, because he shot me a quick, sideways smile that crinkled his eye before disappearing into that carefully neutral expression I was so accustomed to. “She asked if you had been afraid while you were imprisoned, because you seemed so matter-of-fact about it all when you spoke of it to Impa. She said you frightened her, to be able to speak so frankly about being swallowed alive by the Calamity.”

“I was possessed by Hylia at the time,” I interjected. “It’s hard to be anything but frank when you’re the avatar of a Goddess.”

“And while that is true,” he agreed mildly, “it wasn’t what I told her. I told her that you were probably as afraid as I was, which should make your actions more heroic and less frightening. Paya assumed that meant you weren’t afraid _at all_ , because surely I fear nothing.”

He clenched my hand briefly, _almost_ painfully but not quite, and then relaxed his hand to lie flat upon my own, holding it in place on his knee. “I told her she misunderstood courage. Courage is not the lack of fear, but the actions taken in the face of it. Courage is _doing_ the things that scare you, it is the conscious decision to not let fear dictate your life.”

“It is an eight-year-old boy going out to rescue his friend from bokos,” I added softly.

He nodded. “It is not that I suddenly have fear for the first time. It’s that, in the night, in my dreams, I am struggling with the resolve to face it. I have never lacked courage when it came to something I could face with a weapon in hand, a problem I could solve with my hands and eyes and mind. But reliving the failures of my past is something I have no defense against. There is no amount of courage that can face down regret.”

I could not find any words to reply with; no sentiment to voice that could possibly be a match for the naked pain and honesty with which he spoke. The odd way he had been acting earlier - could it have been this fear? I had never seen Link afraid, but it made sense to me that it would present as anger and frustration. What else could a person do, when they are afraid of the very act of sleep? I pressed my hand more firmly against his knee and laid my head upon his shoulder.

He tipped his head to the side, and rested his cheek upon the top of my head. We sat that way until I began to doze off again.

“We both need sleep,” I said, hoping it sounded like a reminder and not the overture of an argument.

He sighed, and nodded. “I feel as if all I’m doing is sleeping. It's like being a child again; I’m wasting half my life.”

“Welcome to the way the rest of us live,” I countered, and was rewarded with a chuckle. “Rest up now, while we’re in civilization, and when we go back into the wild you can stay awake and watch me sleep like the old days.”

“I miss that,” he said, reaching up to sling an arm around me and pull me closer in a loose sort of hug. “It’s been a long time since I’ve known to miss anything.”

“Good,” I answered, and then pushed up to my feet. “Now, did you lock the door, or-“

“This is Kakariko, Zelda,” Link reminded me, kicking his boots off and swinging his legs up onto the spot I had just vacated on the side of the bed. “Nobody bothers with locks because everyone knows how to pick them.”

“Then, to save us all a potentially awkward situation when _someone_ comes up to announce breakfast, as I wouldn’t put it past Cottla to barge in here at dawn, you can have your own bed tonight.”

He had been in the process of laying down, and he shot back up again as I finished speaking. “But you were-“ he swallowed back the protest and nodded. “If you’re sure, Princess.”

“I will survive one night,” I told him, and smiled to see his face soften. “If your dreams trouble you, thanks to that _fucking asshole_ sword, don’t hesitate to come wake me.”

“All proper usage aside,” he laughed lightly, “I’m beginning to think the Sword has the right of it. It does know me better than anyone.”

I felt my mouth twist at the thought but refused to contend that I knew him better than the sword did. There was nothing to be gained by that argument. “Just remember,” I countered, instead, as I turned to pull his door shut behind me, “that it only knows your _life_ , not your future. It can see nothing past the day it is returned to its pedestal.”

I caught a glimpse of his face as I was pulling the door closed. He was frowning thoughtfully at me.

 _She’s right_ , his voice whispered. His mouth didn’t move, and I took comfort from the knowledge I could still hear the sword somewhat. There was no ambient noise to contend with, and it was still just a ghost of a sound, but  _I heard it_. It was something.

As I made my way to the other bedroom, I took a much larger measure of comfort from the sword’s agreeing with me, even if Link didn’t hear it as I did. The sword didn’t know what its Master did once it was back in its pedestal. Link assumed he was fated to fade into obscurity because the sword had no guidance to give him beyond how to put it back. There were no stories about what the Hero did _after_ the sword, just how he claimed it and saved Hyrule with it; just the things the sword would have gleaned from the Hero’s mind in the time they were together.

If I had it my way, Link would do the exact opposite of fading into obscurity. It was a pleasant thought to carry me back into slumber, and my dreams were of the very best variety because of it.

 

*

 

I woke before him in the morning, but the act of cracking open his door to check on him brought him instantly to consciousness. “I’m up,” he muttered, and I couldn’t help but laugh. He didn't move but to scowl and blink resentfully at the sunlight streaming in through the window; my laughing didn't amuse him at all.

“What?”

“I always pictured you as a morning person.”

“Morning is relative,” he retorted, rubbing his face.

“To what?”

“When and how much one sleeps.” He sat up and dangled his feet over the edge of the bed and just stared for a moment at his boots. It was endearing to the point I had to look away to keep my composure. "Yet another reason to stay awake as much as possible."

“Fair. I’m going to see about breakfast with Impa.”

He grunted and held out his hands for inspection. “I’m going to find a bath.”

“Please do.”

He made a face at me and I laughed again as I shut the door. I was still laughing as I made my way out of the inn. The people of Kakariko – aside from the innkeeper – were all happily going about their day, regardless of how the sun was only then starting to peek over the mountains. Link had learned to forego sleep from the Sheikah, and it looked to be a near-universal trait amongst those of the tribe living a hundred years later.

I waved to Cado and Dorian and made my way up the stairs to Impa’s house. The elderly woman was also awake; she had confided in me the day before that she slept only a few hours at a time, at mid-of-day and mid-of-night. _I will sleep all I want soon enough_ , she had said with an almost happy laugh. _I should not begrudge the consciousness now, when it can be of use to so many_.

“Good morning,” she said to me as I walked in.

“It is indeed,” I confirmed. “How are you today?”

“I will never again have a day so pleasant as yesterday, when all my fondest dreams were made real,” she replied with a smile that creased her face to the point of completely hiding her eyes. “Today isn’t half bad. How is our young Hero this morning?”

“Resentful about having to sleep,” I confided.

Impa laughed. “Once he realized how to go without, he saw it as a grand waste,” she said. “Regardless of how badly he needs it in times like these, I fear he will never accept it gracefully.”

“...times like these? Do you know? Did he tell you?”

“Tell me what, child?”

“Of the way the sword that seals the darkness has been piecing back together his memories, of the way he...” I glanced around and saw no sign of Paya, but the girl could hear plainly from the top of the stairs.

“She is out gathering supplies for you to take to Purah when you leave for Hateno,” Impa told me, having easily guessed at the source of my hesitation. “Link has spoken of nothing to me since destroying the Calamity Ganon. I knew of his exertion only, from when he spoke to me last before going to retrieve the Sword. Does something ail him, Zelda?”

“Three nights have passed since we were reunited,” I told her, sinking to my knees on the cushion closest to her, so that I could pitch my voice carefully to her ears. “The first night, he woke with a shout that turned into intense grief. On the second he awoke four times, although more gently with each. Last night he initially refused to sleep at all, and only rested after a long confrontation. The memories, the dreams... he says he has no defense against regret, and I think he actually fears sleep. I don’t know how to help him, Impa.”

“You are the same, child,” she said, softly. “You and Link: you are the _same_. You are souls outside of time, struggling to find your balance. You need the same things: support, forgiveness, time. Only you can give each other the absolution you both crave.”

“What does he need forgiveness for?” I asked, astonished. “He _saved_ me, Impa.”

“He fell, child. His fall is the reason you placed yourself in that prison. Do you not regret his one hundred years’ confinement, do you not blame it on yourself?”

“Of course I do,” I breathed, as she nodded sagely.

“Just as you have formulated a dozen ways you are at fault for the deaths of the other Champions, so too has he. He carries the weight of every death of every Hylian in the one hundred years since his fall, since it was the failing to stop the Calamity when first it struck that led to the loss of so many. It is the guilt of every survivor that you both struggle with, but you had the time and the clarity of the Goddess to carry you through. He has nothing but the struggle to even remember the losses, the failures.”

“But that wasn’t _his_ fault, it was-“

“It is not me you should have this conversation with, child.”

I stared at her, dumbstruck, as her face slowly crinkled up with another bright smile. “Go on, then.”

I stood and dashed out the door, her happy laughter spurring me on.


	5. You and Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Distilled from "Brave" in Calm Waters Run Deep; Zelda forces a conversation with an admission of guilt and it's off to the races from there.  
> Also, here's the Hateno House. <3

I ran back through the still-dim morning sunlight, heedless of the looks I was receiving from the Sheikah. My upbringing told me to stop, to walk slowly, to shake hands and exchange greetings and always maintain perfect posture.

I was the only Hylian royal left, though. I considered, for the briefest of moments, how I would want my people to think of the woman who would be their Queen. _Running through town in pants and boots, grinning to beat the band_. If that didn’t say _approachable_ , I didn’t know what did. There were so few Hylians, now – I could be the first Queen in history to know the name of every last one of her people.

I liked that idea far better than perfect posture.

I did manage to control myself when I got to the door of the inn, sliding it open gently rather than throwing it open in haste. The innkeeper snapped awake, but I closed the door behind me and hurried for the stairs. “Just me, don’t worry, go back to sleep,” I said as I made my way to the second floor.

He said something about not being asleep – _whatever_ – and I pushed open the door to the rooms I shared with Link, slipping inside and letting the door swing shut behind me. His door was closed, but I could hear him moving about in his room, and pause when the main door to the apartment thudded shut.

After a moment’s consideration, I turned around and locked the door. There were bolts at the very top and very bottom, to hold the door into place in case someone picked the lock at the latch. They hadn’t been there before, I was sure of it; I couldn’t help but suspect Link had come out and attached them to the door that morning after I’d left. I slid both of the new bolts into the fresh cut holes in the doorframe.

I heard a soft swish of air behind me and I turned around to see Link in the doorway to his room, barefoot, shrugging on his white linen shirt with hair still damp from his bath.

I leaned my back against the door and tried to calm the sudden flutter of my heart. Goddesses, but the man was _beautiful_. He was always so focused, so _deadly_ , that it was easy to forget that his features were softer – _prettier_ – than most of the women I had known, let alone the men. It was so easy for him to pass amongst the Gerudo as a _vai_ for that very reason.

That, and nobody was looking at his face when he wore that _vai_ disguise _._  How did he hide his gender while exposing half his body?He had to have those clothes in his packs, I wonder if he would-

I shook my head to clear it of _that_ thought, as he watched me with an increasingly bemused expression, and I realized I’d wasted a perfectly good opportunity to _come up with something to say_. He had been bathing, for fuck’s sake, I could have taken my time coming back and had the perfect opening barrage prepared to launch as soon as I opened the door.

“Back so soon?” he asked, as he buttoned his cuffs. He cocked an eyebrow at me and adjusted his collar before beginning to button the front of the shirt.

I could try to ease into it or just throw it all on the table. Then again, we'd been _easing into it_ for days. Diving in, then: “It was my fault. Not yours.”

He froze and his face went blank.

“Nothing was your fault. _None of it_. I was the Commander. I made the decisions. It was _my call_. All of it. Their deaths are on me. Not you. Never you.”

He reached out to clutch the doorframe with one hand. The other shook as it slowly dropped to his side. “That’s not-“

“I froze when the... when the _pig demon_ woke up. I collapsed in the woods. I didn’t find my power in time. I didn’t save you in time. Don’t you see that I _could have saved you_? The Golden Power shuts down the Guardians and I had it all along! Your fall was _my fault_. And rather than let you go, I forced you to stay alive. I sent you to the Shrine of Resurrection. I cost you your memories. I’m the reason you woke up alone, defenseless, weakened, lost. Everything happening to you right now is _my fault_. I’m so sorry, Link, I don’t know how to make it better.”

He started to shake his head. “No, you did absolutely everything you knew how to do. When the Calamity first awoke, the Divine Beasts stood empty. That was _my_ call, I called the Champions together. I could have beaten the aspects within the Beasts then, before they killed our friends – that was my job. They were pilots, _I_ was the knight, the warrior. I should have escorted everyone back to their Beasts. Then you wouldn’t have had to listen to the death redes of everyone we loved.”

“There was no way we could have guessed there was any means by which the Beasts could be taken from us. You can’t fault yourself for decisions that had to be made before all the facts were known.”

“Which applies to everything you just said, too, Zelda.”

I started to argue – he was right about part of that, but not all – but he wasn’t stopping. “And even then, when you ‘collapsed in the woods,’ I should have carried you towards the Castle, not away from it. I heard what you said at the top of Mount Lanayru, I _knew_ you had access to your power. I picked you up off the ground and I should have carried you to Ganon and _we both know it_.”

And there, I could not argue. I had wondered about it, at the time, as I had come back to myself, somewhere along the river bank in the dark and the rain. “You knew I was in no shape to fight,” I told him, remembering Impa’s choice of the word _absolution_. “You could not know how long I would be catatonic, how long it would take to shake free of the shock. You-“

“Don’t,” he said, although without the heat his voice had held in the days previous. “You were - and yet are - stronger than that. I knew, then, that you were stronger than that. You were born for that fight, _I knew better_.”

“Alright, so, you chose the fight in Hateno. Why?”

His jaw clenched and I worried he would shut down, he would refuse to answer. He looked at the floor, balled his hand into a fist, and worked his jaw, practically chewing on the confession that was stewing in his throat.

“In the moment,” he finally said, each word seeming to rattle his body as he forced it out, “it was more important to me that you were safe.”

He’d chosen me over Hyrule. He hadn’t said it, hadn’t phrased it quite that way, but that’s what he was telling me. He could have taken me to face my destiny or he could have taken me to Kakariko where I could be protected, and he chose Kakariko. He’d chosen my personal well-being over the life of every other person in Hyrule.

Oh, I should have been angry. I should have been devastated. I should have been anything except what I was – which was moved, to the point of tears. My father had spent my whole life reminding me that I was ultimately unimportant in the face of my destiny; for me or my needs to be _first_ was an impossibility. Even if it was wrong, _Link had put me first_. I could do nothing but love him for that choice.

He looked up at me, clearly bracing for the worst, and his eyes lit up with surprise with what they read on my face. I wanted to tell him I forgave him, that I loved him for what he considered his failing - but I couldn't. Not with my own wrongs still hovering between us.

“I knew the Shrine would cost your memories,” I confessed, and for a long moment we were both still. “Purah told me. She told me we hadn’t ever learned how to power the Shrine, and that it would take as much as one hundred and fifty years before you woke up, and by that point the chance of you retaining your memory was practically zero. I knew you would sleep for decades, at the very least. I knew you might wake up and instantly fall. I knew the safer bet was to trust to the Sword, to Hylia, to let you... to let you _go_ and let the Sword choose a new Champion, as it might have done anyways if the Shrine hadn’t worked.”

He lifted his other hand to the door frame, holding on as if the ground was shifting beneath his feet. “Why didn’t you?”

Oh, Goddess, Impa had said we were the same, and we were. _We were_. We had both made the same choice.

“Because of the one-in-a-million chance that, a century or more down the line, I could have you back. For the chance that the person who came to rescue me would be _you_ , and not some stranger. Because for as long as that chance was greater than _zero_ I had to take it and hope.”

His jaw went slack and he stared at me, in frank disbelief. “Zelda, you could have been freed in a few decades, if I had died and a new Hero was born.”

“I told you. I would have waited _millennia_ if that’s what it took to get you back. Link, I chose-”

He seemed staggered, but he shook his head. “You... you should not have had to. You should not have had that choice even presented to you. I was supposed to protect you, and I did not. I wasn’t strong enough in Hateno, you should not have been able to push me aside and stand in the way of that Guardian. _That moment_ should never had happened. I was not meant to Fall-“

“You were!” I half-shouted, and he reared back in shock. “You were _meant to fall_ , Link. That’s the whole reason they _built the fucking Shrine_.”

His features slowly twisted into a frown, although whether of horror or deep thought I wasn’t sure. I had to hedge my bets on the latter. “They built the Shrine _for you_. Our ancestors, when they planned for the resurgence of the Calamity, _planned for your fall_. Don’t you see? When I went to the Castle, after leaving the Sword with the Great Deku Tree, once I got over the bridge I wasn’t stopped. The Guardians in the Castle let me through. Why would they do that, if there wasn’t a trap set for us? For you? We will never know what would have happened if you had carried me to the Castle to meet Ganon. But we _do_ know what happened when you took me to Hateno; we eventually won. By the time you fell, the Castle was gone. The Castle town was destroyed. The Guardians were _in Hateno_ already. Your falling didn’t cost the lives of our fathers, our friends – they were already _gone_. The only thing we know, for sure, is that your fall – our _choices_ – led to this moment. Alive, the Calamity banished, and ten thousand years of peace before anyone has to do this again.”

His frown faded and he looked at me blankly, like I had caught him completely unawares, blindsiding him. He shook his head slightly and opened his mouth and I could see another protest – or worse, an apology – blooming on his lips.

“If there is one thing I want you to never, _ever_ apologize for,” I said before he could find the words for whatever his contention would be, “it is for being the very first person to ever _choose me_ over everything else. No one has ever put my well-being before _anything_. Only you. It would destroy me to know you regret it.”

“Not once,” he whispered. “That’s the worst of it. If it were to happen all over again, if I had to relive it all – _again_ – I would do it the exact same. I would carry you away, even knowing it would kill me.”

I was across the room as quickly as I could move my feet, and his arms reached out to catch me as I collapsed against him. I clutched his shoulders and felt his hands splayed out across my back, his heart pounding against mine through the half-buttoned linen of his shirt. After a moment, he swept my knees up over his arm and carried me to the chair I’d fallen asleep in the night before and dropped into it. He draped my legs over one arm rest and used the other to prop up my back and free his hands. He wrapped one arm around my shoulder, put the other to the small of my back, and crushed me against his chest.

“If not for the people,” he said, roughly, “I would happily let Hyrule burn a dozen times over, if I thought it would save you. We can rebuild the bridges, the schools, the wells... but not the people. I regret the ones we lost, the countless lives ruined. I know you do, too.”

I nodded against his shoulder. “We will rebuild the bridges,” I told him. “We’ll dig new wells, open new schools. But the people, Link... it was not _your_ power that killed them. It was Ganon. It was the Calamity, the pig demon. Those deaths are not on your head, for that absolves _him_ of guilt. We must put the blame where it belongs, and never forget what he is capable of.”

His fingers tensed against me, but after a bit of hesitation, he nodded. “You’re right. I will... try... to keep that in mind.”

I let my hand tangle up the half-buttoned shirt and felt his pulse, strong and steady, against my fingertips. Even after a bath, the smell of him didn’t change; he was oiled steel and smoke, horses and forest, and under it all the acrid promise of magic. I’d long since known I would never love anyone like I did Link, but in that moment, I felt another aspect of that truth settle around me: I would never find a better man to be my king.

And I had no way to ask it of him.

Fucking _Mipha_.

 

*

 

We stayed in the chair for most of the morning. I studied his face from extreme close-up, my head on his shoulder, while his pulse thrummed against the backs of my fingers where they clutched his shirt. He rubbed patient circles on my back with one hand, while the thumb of the other ran tirelessly back and forth across my shoulder.

“You should eat something,” I said, with great regret, once my own stomach would no longer tolerate my neglect.

The look he aimed at me, from the corner of his eyes, said (quite clearly) that he saw through my deceit. “If by that, you mean _you_ should eat something...”

“If you mean to start staying up all night again, you have to start eating as much as two or three men,” I countered, and watched, fascinated, as the corners of his eyes crinkled into a smile.

“What’s your excuse, then?”

“I didn’t eat for a century,” I replied, nonplussed. “A girl’s got to make up for lost time.”

“Right.”

It was back, then – the easy back-and-forth that had been the foundation of my life before the Calamity. It was not the same – it would never _be_ the same – but it was just as good.

“I have never blamed you,” I whispered as he shifted his weight to stand. He froze. “You know that, right? Never, for one second, have I ever _blamed_ you.”

“I know that _now_ ,” he confessed, and sank back into the chair. “I thought... the reason you needed your power was for when I inevitably fucked up and died again. I thought you snuck away in the castle because you didn’t trust me with the back entrance to the Sanctum. I assumed you wouldn’t tell me about Saria because you knew I wasn’t strong enough to-“

“Augh, Goddess bless, _stop_ ,” I pleaded. “No more. None of that is right.”

“I started to realize that last night. The window I’ve been looking at the world through is distorted. Everything made sense in my head, but none of it matched up with what was actually happening around me. It was... disorienting. Hopefully that gets better now that the Sword is done rummaging through my memories.”

“I had hoped you would wake up with your memories, with _some_ thing if not everything,” I told him. “I’m so sorry you did not. I’m sorry for the hardship you’ve had to-“

“No,” he said, reaching up with one hand to place a finger to my lips. My heart surged against my ribs like it meant to escape its bone prison. A tiny voice in the back of my head _screamed_ for me to kiss his finger, but what we were saying was too important to possibly derail with an advance I still couldn’t convince myself he wanted.

“If I can’t apologize, neither can you,” he was saying. “I have never blamed you for anything, Zelda. Even when you were a prat who sent me away.”

He surprised me, and I laughed in spite of myself. He pulled his hand away from my face and lifted me easily to my feet.

“Are we going to Hateno today or tomorrow?” he asked as I pulled my clothing back into order.

“I don’t know, it seems a shame to waste the hard work you put into the door locks.” I canted a look at the newly-installed bolts as I spoke.

He shrugged, completely lacking in self-consciousness. “If they’re the reason we were able to talk this morning, they’ve already paid for themselves.”

“Where did they come from, anyways?”

“Guardian parts,” he answered, moving to his room to grab his pack. He shook a handful of screws into his palm. “I have hundreds of bits and pieces in here.”

“Is your pack even bigger now than it was before?”

He nodded with a smile and then put the various screws and shafts away before tugging on his boots and finishing dressing. I willfully turned away from the sight; it was look away or be hopelessly distracted again. How could I possibly ask him about the  _vai_ disguise and not have it come across as unacceptably depraved?  _Think of something else, Zelda_. Hateno. Travel. Packing. His oversized pack - from Koroks, wasn't it? Didn't he say there was one in the town, near Impa's house? 

“As much as I think I want to know more, I believe I’ll skip being introduced to that Korok. If you’re ready to go to Hateno Village, I am as well.”

“Purah might be able to adjust the Sheikah slate so travel is easier,” Link said as he settled his pack on his back. I grabbed my own sparse belongings from the other room and met him at the door. “We’ll be able to come back to Kakariko on a whim.”

“That will be interesting,” I observed as we trotted down the stairs, once again waking up the innkeeper. “We’ve always taken the absolute longest road possible when travelling. The idea of going anywhere quickly, on a whim? Doesn’t feel like us.”

“It will grow on you,” he promised, winking as he slid open the door.

Kakariko was as Kakariko always seemed to be – sleepless but slow, half-empty but never still. Link reached for my hand and I threaded my fingers through his, a new muscle memory that I was coming to love even more than my grip on his bracer behind his back.

Paya was standing by the row of shrines, at the base of the stairs to Impa’s house, calmly tending to Saria. Link freed his hand from mine and as he pulled me close and laid his opposite palm on the small of my back. “Go make your farewells to Impa,” he said softly. “I’ll be up in a moment.”

I nodded and made my way to the stairs, as he walked over to his clever girls. It was none of my business, clearly, and instead of wondering what had transpired between them, I focused instead of how easily our roles had switched. He had long followed me, taking the lead only when my safety was in question. And now that I was fumbling through this new world, he was directing my steps. I wondered if he noticed, if it struck him as weird, or if he had any idea of the role I wanted him to play in my future.

Given he’d only figured out this morning that I didn’t blame him for the Calamity, the idea that I wanted him to marry me, father my children, and help me rule our kingdom _probably_ hadn’t crossed his mind.

Baby steps, Zelda. Baby steps.

I pushed open the door to find Impa asleep, on a single cushion to the side of the comically tall stack she normally knelt upon. Her breath was steady and slow, and I stood just inside the door and took comfort in the simple fact that _Impa yet lived_.

I was fairly certain her grandmother, from whom she’d inherited the house, had been over one hundred and fifty when she’d passed, so it was possible we would have several more years with Impa. It was also possible she would slip away with the next breath.

She’s cautioned me to live in the moment. That, more than anything else, prompted me to step softly across the room, kneel at her head, and wake her with a gentle hand to the shoulder.

She transitioned immediately from deeply asleep to fully conscious. “How did it go, child?”

“Better than I had any right to hope for,” I replied. “Thank you, for everything. We’re leaving for Hateno now. He thinks Purah can alter the slate to help us travel.”

Impa snorted. “Good luck. Rethink that when you lay eyes on her, and remember she’s my _older_ sister.”

What on earth did that mean? “I will keep that in mind, I guess?”

“Where’s Link?”

“Here,” he said, from the door. “I’ve asked Paya to take care of Saria for me. They’re good for each other, I think.”

“I've warned you about thinking.”

Link snorted and then stepped back out of the house.

“Well, on Link’s behalf, as well as my own, thank you for your continued hospitality. I hope we shall be back through Kakariko again soon.”

“Fare well, child. Tell my idiot sister to write. And shut the door on the way out, I’ve got another hour to nap before Paya comes back.”

“I will,” I agreed, and quickly moved to follow in Link’s footsteps. Impa had been right – she’d aged, but she definitely hadn’t changed. She wouldn't let me stand on ceremony if I begged.

“I’ve been meaning to move Nubbin to the house in Hateno,” Link said when I joined him at the foot of the stairs. Cado wasn’t present, but Dorian waved gamely at me. Saria and Paya were making their way up the hill, and I told myself I didn’t _need_ to say goodbye; I would be back through this village dozens of times over the course of my life. Best not to establish in anyone’s minds a need for ceremony, not when Impa already had them all disabused of the notion.

“Nothing in that sentence made any sense at all,” I replied, and Link laughed in that silent way of his. “But, by all means, lead on.”

We walked south out of the Village, across the Kakariko bridge, and into the wetlands that marked the place Link made his final stand a hundred years before. It was a quiet trek; I tried to take in the differences a century made on the landscape - the almost-familiar sense of trees being too big or too small or hillsides sloping in a different angle after some forgotten flood - and let Link do whatever it was Link did when we traveled. Was he lost in thought? Was his mind peacefully blank? Was he monitoring the countryside for threats, to the exclusion of all else? We walked shoulder-to-shoulder in silence until we reached the edge of the Blatchery Plain.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get over the chill I get, seeing those piles of Guardians,” I said as I stared out over the Ash Swamp at the unmistakable shapes of the automatons that had effectively slain Link a hundred years before.

“I felt better about it once I realized we’re the ones who killed them all,” he answered, and there was actually a touch of pride in his voice. Even more surprising, I was relieved to hear it; it was a perspective I was eager to share. “I met a man here who told me the story of my fall; it was the single most surreal moment of my life.”

I shuddered. “I can imagine. Let’s make it through the gap this time, shall we?”

He laughed again, and continued south towards the stable where the road turned to cut through the Dueling Peaks. It was much smaller than the old building had been, but the stable I remembered had been destroyed by the swarm of Guardians Link had given his life to stop. Link mentioned that all the stables now looked like this one – only a few beds, only a few horses, and the wood-and-cloth horsehead upon the roof.

“They’ll be glad to get rid of Nubbin,” he said as we approached the window.

“Oh! Master Link! Welcome back, good sir, welcome back. Did you hear the good news, sir? The cloud has been lifted from the Castle, good master, and they say the Princess... the Princess... Great Golden Goddesses, is that the Princess with you?”

“I’ve come to retrieve Nubbin from your care,” Link said, flatly ignoring the question. I stepped behind Link so the man at the window couldn’t see my smile.

“You – oh! Oh, yes, of course, we’re, ah, very sorry to see him go, of course, but, ah-“

“I’ll be stabling him in Hateno from here on out,” Link told him. “And I thank you for your good care.”

“Oh, absolutely, absolutely, let me just have him sent around.”

The only thing that didn’t make sense, once I saw the horse Link took from the stable, was his name. His shoulder was a full hand taller than Link, with a body the color of ink and a mane of straight _orange_. His eyes were decidedly red and he looked nothing short of demonic.

“Nubbin. You named _him_ Nubbin. Seriously?”

Link grinned at me and then laced his fingers together to give me a boost into the saddle. I shook my head and put my left foot into his hands and allowed him to practically throw me onto the back of the horse. Then Link took a short running start and leapt onto the monster stallion. He shifted me carefully into the saddle, letting himself sit behind, and then with a clipped _hyeh_ encouraged the beast into a brisk walk.

“He’s slower than you’re used to, but he’ll run for days,” Link told me as he reached around for the reins. We had only ridden double once, and it was in this same field, on that same horrible day I’d been remembering earlier.

It seemed we were, truly, working to replace the old memories with new. I had to admit - to myself, at least - that I probably needed it as badly as Link did. 

I didn’t really breathe again until we were through the poorly-repaired wall that was all that remained of old Fort Hateno. As we followed the road through the Gap of Quince, I imagined that it was a hundred years before, that we’d both stayed on the horse rather than becoming separated, that he’d _lived_ and we’d _won_ and all of the hardship of the last few days – not to mention the century before them – simply hadn’t happened.

Of course, I liked my options better, now that I was the sole authority in the kingdom. That didn’t mean I couldn’t pretend a little.

”What are you thinking?” Link asked, his mouth so near to my cheek as to cause his breath to heat my ear and a line of goosebumps to rise on my arm.

“I like this much better than the last time I was on a horse on Blatchery Plain.”

He was quiet for a moment, and then shifted the reins into his left hand so he could wrap his right around my waist. “Me too.”

I leaned into him and he met me halfway, so we were riding practically cheek-to-cheek, with my head tipped back onto his shoulder and the tip of his chin hovering above my collar bone. I found my hands resting on his knees and it was all I could do to keep my eyes open and keep track of the world around me. The temptation to shut my eyes and just _feel_ was not one I was willing to surrender to – not when I so badly needed every aspect of this new memory.

In no time at all, the smudge of smoke on the horizon became a slew of chimneys, which in turn revealed tiled rooftops and then a bustling village, far more active than Kakariko had been. I could see children darting across the street, heading home as twilight fell; barkers in front of shops calling out their wares; and above it all the slowly-growing noise of _life_. We rode up to almost the first house and then Link turned Nubbin hard to the right and up a steep road I hadn’t noticed until we were upon it. The houses here were wildly different than anything I had ever seen – perfectly square, audaciously colored, and utterly empty. There was a sign indicating these were model homes – whatever _that_ meant – and past them was a narrow bridge. On the far side of the bridge was a single house – as large as any in town, with an empty manger beside and an apple tree heavy with fruit. As we came to a stop, I realized there was a sign by the door that read simply, _Link’s house_.

Something tickled my memory, and I was fairly certain I’d known he had a house. Hadn’t I? “When did you get a house?”

“They were going to tear it down, so I offered to buy it,” he said, as he pushed slightly away from me and then dismounted. He put his hands out to me and I threw my right leg over Nubbin's back and dropped off the side of the horse. Link’s hands slid up my sides to slow my decent, and once my feet were on the ground we stood, eye-to-eye but for an inch difference in height, for long enough that I started having problems breathing again.

“Bolson was here earlier,” he said, breaking eye contact to nod at the fire nearby, which was burnt down to embers. “He likes to sit under the tree when he needs a break. I’m sure you’ll see him tomorrow when we head up to Purah’s lab.”

He gestured to the front door and then took Nubbin’s reins and led him over to the manger he just barely fit beneath. There was a bale of hay nearby, but the apple tree and thick grass all over the hillside were far more likely to catch the gentle giant’s attention. I pushed open the door as Link pulled off the monster saddle and started rubbing the horse down.

It wasn’t just a house. This was, simply put, a legitimate _home_. The table was set – sadly, for one – and the lamps were filled if unlit. There was a short stack of books on a shelf – several of which looked suspiciously familiar – and a staircase leading up to a loft. On the walls around the table were a series of weapon racks, and a lump filled my throat as I realized what was displayed.

The shattered remnants of a Hylian shield, probably reclaimed from the field at Fort Hateno.

Another damaged shield, but this one of the Royal Guard – and I suspected of having belonged to his father.

The third shield, in the corner, was known as Daybreaker. Urbosa had never been anywhere without it, or the sword that hung next to it, on the next wall: the Scimitar of the Seven.

In the middle of the far wall, in an obvious place of honor, was the Lightscale Trident of our beloved Mipha, the Zora Champion.

The third weapon was Daruk’s Boulder Breaker, which I was pretty sure was taller than Link. I'd love to see him wield it, and I was positive he  _could_ , if he hadn't already.

The last section of wall held three plaques but only two bows. The first was Revali’s Great Eagle bow. I was almost glad I didn’t hear the Rito’s spirit anymore; I couldn’t imagine his reaction to seeing his weapon hanging in a place of honor in Link’s little home.

The other bow, in the middle of the three racks, was very small and simple; it was something I imagined a child might use. Perhaps it was Link's first?

The door closed behind me, and I felt Link brush against me as he moved past. He unslung the bow I’d given him when I was yet trapped within the Calamity – the bow of Light – and hung it reverently on the last plaque.

“Are all the others what I think they are?” I asked as he took a moment to look over each one. He glanced over at me and nodded. I pointed at the small bow in the middle. “Where did you find that?”

“In my father’s things, buried in the barracks,” he answered, and I immediately bit my fist to keep my composure. That wound was still too raw, for me – my father’s diary had torn it all open again and I hadn’t begun to sort through it.

Link rummaged through his pack and – lo and behold – produced the very journal I had just been thinking of. He set it on the stack with the rest.

“And, yes, before you ask, that’s your diary. And what research notes I could find.” He glanced around the room. “I didn’t know how important it all was. I just knew it was, and I would want it later. I was right.”

“I’m glad you had the foresight to collect it.”

“There’s only the one bed, but it’s wider than standard, and Bolson found me a very soft mattress,” Link said, still rummaging through his packs and setting bits and pieces here and there around the room. “Snoop all you like, there’s probably as many of your things here as mine. Anytime something felt familiar, I scooped it up.”

I took that as a plea for a bit of distance – he’d just invited me into his _home_ , after all, and I’d never known him to claim a space like this – so I wandered up the stairs. There were several paintings on the walls that I recognized immediately; if I had to guess, they were Pikango’s renditions of pictures on the Sheikah slate. There was a desk on the loft, with my old book on herbs laying open to the page on Silent Princess, the pressed flower now over a century old but still, somehow, looking precisely the same. There was a lockbox on the floor next to the desk, and I idly flipped it open and, shocked, immediately shut it again.

There were tens of thousands of rupees inside. Tens of _thousands_. Everything I had seen was silver or gold, with only a handful of purple mixed in. Link’s head emerged at the edge of the loft as he came silently up the stairs. He paused at the top and lifted an eyebrow to see me hovered over his lockbox, seemingly holding the lid in place.

“Why is this sitting here _unlocked_?” I managed to ask. It seemed the better question than _where the fuck did all this money come from_.

“If someone really wants to steal from me, they can have it,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve been generous in town, though, and I think Karson keeps an eye on the place when I’m not here. Besides, if they take the rupees they will be too weighted down to go looking for the gems I’ve got hidden downstairs.”

Something about the expression on my face made him laugh, and all I could do was shake my head. “I can’t believe you had enough time through all of this to buy a house and amass a small fortune,” I said.

Link shrugged. “It wasn’t hard. While running from one place to the next, if I saw something to pick up, I picked it up. I found your weight in diamonds in Hebra, but who has the money to buy them all? Well, besides Beetle, but even he can only carry so much. So I keep them. If something happens to Mipha’s trident, the smith in Zora’s domain can fix it with diamonds, so I’ve got some diamonds set aside just in case. After awhile it just builds up.”

“If the treasury hadn’t still been intact, I would be knocking on your door for a loan,” I said, aiming for humor.

Link wasn’t laughing. “My life is yours, Princess. You can take my stuff as well.”

I sighed and leaned against his desk. “I don’t want your _stuff_ , Link.”

“What do you want?”

 _Oh_ , it would be so easy to tell him. He stood, poised with one foot on the landing and one still on the top stair, with a look on his face that I couldn’t distill down into anything as mundane as words if I had another hundred years to dedicate to the endeavor. I could ask for literally anything at that moment and he would give it, no hesitation-

Which was the problem, honestly. If I told him, in plain language, that I wanted no one else but him for my king, he would immediately agree. I would spend the rest of my life wondering whether he actually wanted it, or whether he was agreeing to it because he was Link and that was what Link did.

“Dinner,” I answered instead. My stomach helpfully grumbled, loudly in the stillness, and the moment was broken. Link laughed, although still not with the humor I had hoped to hear, and nodded towards the ground floor. I followed him down the stairs to find more of the paper-wrapped packages laid out on the table, which was now set with two places.

“It would be easy to stir up the fire outside, but there’s not much of this left and I’d rather eat it while its good.”

“I will never turn down your cooking,” I said, ignoring the apology hidden in his words. There were more mushroom and rice balls here, and – on a simple plate at the chair he indicated was for me – a small loaf of fruit cake.

“Did I ever tell you this is my favorite?” I asked, eyeing the treat.

“No, but there was a book in the library of the Castle that indicated it might be.”

I looked up in time to see him gesture, again, at the stack of reclaimed books on the shelf. “It should be the same recipe you grew up with.”

It was. Oh, it was. It was everything I remembered, but _better_ because it was Link who made it for me, and not some nameless, faceless kitchen staff.

“Most favorite and least favorite food,” I prompted in between bites of rice.

“What, mine?”

I nodded.

“Most favorite, stuffed pumpkin. I never had it until I came through Kakariko the first time; it was the first _new_ _food_ I had after leaving Faron and I think the novelty was a big reason I loved it so much.”

I laughed and he paused to cock an eyebrow at me.

“I think stuffed pumpkin is one of my least favorite.” He scowled at me and I shrugged happily. “I will never fight with you for it; you’re welcome to my share.”

He smiled brightly and for a moment I forgot the question he was answering. “Least favorite, durian.”

“Really? But your bag is always full of it.”

“I can live off it forever,” he replied with a shrug. “It’s probably the heartiest food in existence. Just stew up a pot of it and run all day. Unfortunately, it tastes like sweetened moblin snot.”

I choked on a laugh, nearly shooting rice out my nose, and Link grinned as soon as it was clear I could breathe. “Have you actually tasted moblin snot?”

“Asks the woman who tried to feed me a raw frog?”

“I intended to cook it!”

I was laughing too hard to argue further, and Link merely grinned before taking a large bite of pumpkin. “There are few things I haven’t tasted, whether through accident, incident or actual intent.”

“I am so sorry I asked.”

“Always keep your mouth closed when fighting Hynoxes.”

“Oh, Goddesses, I don’t want to know!”

We carried on like that for hours, laughing and _loud_ like I had so rarely been. We’d been forced into a kind of stealth when we traveled before the Calamity, both to keep up appearances for the populace as well as to avoid the notice of goblin folk. In the past few days we'd been together, there was a strain between us that had forced a sort of calm. This...? This was something new. This was like only one other night in my entire life.

“This reminds me of my last birthday,” I said when the hour had grown long and we’d quieted some.

Link’s eye traveled down the row of weapons on the wall. “Even knowing what I do now, I’m glad that night happened. It was the only time I had ever seen you truly happy.”

I raised my water glass. Link smiled and followed suit. “To the Noble Pursuit of happiness,” I declared, and he laughed and touched his glass to mine.

“A hundred and twenty-something years old, and still they won’t let me drink in Gerudo Town,” he said with a sigh.

“They shouldn’t let you _in_ to Gerudo town!” I countered, and he shrugged. It could have been a fine opening to ask him about the disguise, but I couldn't risk leaving this otherwise-perfect night on a sour note. Before I could think of another direction to lead the conversation, I yawned, my jaw cracking in protest. “Goodness, excuse me. I should probably take that as my sign to go to sleep.”

It was awkward, suddenly, where it never had been before. I refused to buckle beneath the feeling, though. “Are you sleeping tonight?”

“I don’t-” he started to say, and then abruptly stopped. He seemed to search my eyes, for so long I became self-conscious, but I had no idea what he sought. I held his gaze and tried not to fidget, but I couldn’t help biting my lip as I waited for him to answer.

“It wouldn’t hurt to catch a few hours,” he said, softly, without ever looking away.

I nodded and pushed to my feet, heading immediately up the stairs to pull off my tunic and boots. I wore a thin undershirt, like Link did, although mine was notably more substantial and far more fitted than his loose linen button-down. I sat on the side of the bed and worked to braid my hair into a single plait, and hopefully cut down on the time I spent detangling it in the morning. Link appeared at the top of the stairs in his undershirt and pants, barefoot, and suddenly timid.

“You slept on your own last night,” he reminded me, looking anywhere but at my eyes. It was such a departure from just a few minutes before that I couldn’t conclude anything but that he was stuck in the same emotional quagmire about me that I was about him. “You can take the bed, if you like and I can-“

I flipped my finished braid over my shoulder and extended a hand to him as he trailed off. I wiggled my fingers to indicate he should reach out and take it, and after a moment he crossed the room and laid his palm in mine. I tugged until he sat down on the bed beside me, and then released his hand to drape my socks across the tops of my boots and move my extraneous gear farther away from the bed.

“You’re not getting kicked from your own bed in your own house,” I told him as I worked. “And if you think a couple of nights and one perfect horse ride is enough to cancel out a hundred years of solitary confinement, you’re a fool.”

He was smiling at me, but I busied myself with turning down the bed and crawling into the sheets. The bed  _was_ wider than most – as wide as the one I’d slept in at the Castle, growing up – and there was room for us both with enough to spare to provide a wide gap in between.

I scooted to the wall and Link laid near the edge with his back to me. I waited until he was settled and then moved toward him, meaning to curl around him in the dark.

He moved to meet me halfway, rolling to face me as soon as he felt my shift towards the middle. He tucked his hand between the bed and the curve of my waist, lifting his other to brush the wayward strands of hair out of my face. I gathered the courage to curl one hand at the curve of his neck where it rested on the pillow and rest the other on his hip. Our legs crisscrossed at the knees.

“Go to sleep, Princess,” he murmured once we were settled.

“You have to start using my name,” I complained, having to fight against the sleep that was already coming to claim me.

“You will always be my Princess,” he countered. I could hear the humor in his tone, but he was _wrong_ and I needed him to know.

“No, I won’t.”

“No? Why not?”

“Princesses don’t hold the throne in Hyrule,” I told him. He should know – he was Hylian, he knew the story of the heritage of the royal family, _he should know_ – but maybe he’d forgotten. “I can change so much about this kingdom, but I can’t change that.”

He paused, and that was all the confirmation I needed. He knew, and he didn’t want to think about me marrying in order to become Queen – so either he didn’t want to be King or he still had no idea he was the only contender for the title. And this, once again, was not the time for that conversation. This was quiet and comfortable and sweet and any number of things I didn't want to put words to - I'd rather just appreciate it while I had it.

“Regardless of what the future holds, Zelda,” he whispered as my tenuous hold on consciousness failed, “you will always be the Golden Princess in the besieged Castle that I had the honor of saving.”

I tried to give him a similar speech, but all that I managed was, “My Hero,” before tumbling into sleep.


	6. Put Your Money On Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Purah! Lots and lots of Purah. Almost-too-much Purah.  
> God damn it, Purah.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT IS STILL SUNDAY  
> I just barely made it, but it's 11 pm where I am, so promise kept. :-D

I opened my eyes at dawn to find myself in the precise same position I’d fallen asleep in. My legs were tangled with Link’s, my hands rested on his neck and hip, and his hands circled my waist.

His eyes crinkled at the corners when I blinked awake, and it took several seconds longer than normal to place where I was and why.

Oh, Goddess, the look in his eyes when he was watching me! It was impossible to form thoughts when he was looking at me like that.

“Good morning,” I managed, my voice not quite cooperating yet with my mind.

He made a soft sound of agreement, and reached up to tuck a stray hair behind my ear. It occurred to me that I hadn’t moved in the night, so there was little reason for any hair to be loose; I couldn’t quite accept the idea that he’d run his fingers across my cheek for any other reason.

“Have you slept?”

He hesitated before he nodded, which struck me as _highly_ suspicious. Before I could question him further, there was a sudden and furious pounding at the door.

“Master Link! Master Link! Your horse is here, where are you? Master Link!”

“Nebb,” Link sighed, and carefully pulled free of me and swung out of bed. He pitched his voice into a loud whisper and called, “Keep your voice down, I’m coming!”

I hopped out of bed and went to the rail at the edge of the loft. I could see the door but wouldn’t be readily noticed by whoever was waiting outside. Link hadn’t seemed concerned... but then again, he did stop and grab his pack on the way to the door.

He threw the bolt – which looked an awful lot like what he’d added to the door in Kakariko – and pulled the door open.

On the other side was a child.

“Master Link! Oh, Master Link, did you bring it? I told Narah you’d have it, I told-“

“I do, I do. But you have to keep your voice down, Princesses need their sleep.”

The little boy’s gasp was priceless. “You have a _Princess_?”

Link nodded. “She has been fighting the Calamity in the Castle, to keep everyone safe. I helped her seal it away, and now she’s free to meet everyone she’s worked so hard to save. She’ll come into the village and meet everyone soon, but for now she needs her sleep.”

Nebb nodded avidly. “Fighting a Calamity would be really tiring, I think.”

“Really tiring,” Link agreed. “But a deal is a deal, so let me get you the sword.”

The child was jumping from foot to foot, plainly excited. Link reached into his pack and brought out a weapon unlike anything I had seen outside of a book. “One ancient short sword,” he announced, and handed the glowing blue blade to the boy.

Nebb took it and darted outside, swinging it wildly and making completely unintelligible declarations at the top of his lungs. I covered my mouth with both hands, to keep from alerting him to my presence with the laugh I was otherwise helpless to contain.

“Nebb! Sleeping Princess! Remember?”

The boy went immediately silent and scurried back to the door to hand the weapon back over to Link. There was a bit of a whispered conversation, and then Nebb handed Link what looked to be a large, uncut diamond. Link and the child argued for a moment, and then the boy stomped his foot and seemed to win the fight.

“If that’s the end of the list, go back to your chores. I’ve got to cook breakfast for the Princess.”

“How do I know you really have a Princess in here and you’re not just saying that?” the child asked, and craned his neck to peer into the house around Link’s elbows. He gasped when he saw me, and stared a moment before backing quickly away from the door.

“Link! There’s a _lady_ on your loft!”

“That means we woke up the Princess, Nebb. That’s not a very nice thing to do, when she’s been fighting to keep you safe your whole life.”

“Sorry, Princess!” Nebb called.

“It was time for me to wake up anyways,” I called down.

“She seems really nice,” Nebb told Link, in a conspiratorial whisper.

“She really is,” Link agreed mildly. “No more shirking your chores, go on. I’ll come into town later.”

“Thanks for finding me the sword!” Nebb said over his shoulder as he turned and ran across the bridge. There were two men walking across the bridge towards the house, and Link waved at them before halfway closing the door and turning to look up at me.

He gestured at the incoming company. “Bolson and Karson. They won’t come in, but they won’t leave, either. I’ll have breakfast ready in a minute if you want to come down...? There’s a bath house around back if you’d like to wash up before we go up to see Purah.”

“All of that sounds perfectly reasonable,” I agreed, and then lifted a finger to indicate an exception. “But where on earth did that child come up with a _diamond_?”

Link shrugged. “He keeps saying it’s from his grandfather, to be given to the man who teaches him to fight, but I talked to his parents and they have no idea where the money is coming from.”

“Wait, there’s been more?”

“He gave me a golden rupee a few weeks ago. I’ve got a box under the bed where I’ve been putting everything Nebb pays me, in case it ends up being cursed or something.”

I cast a concerned look at the bed that made Link laugh – I would never get tired of that sound – as he let himself back out of the house to meet more guests. I set about making myself presentable for the introduction to the man Link thought should be my Minister of Infrastructure.

I was tempted to bound down the stairs – oh, to have my boots back! – but instead I descended as regally as ten years of constant training could make me. The door was left ajar, and the two men speaking to Link could see my descent.

The reaction I received when I emerged from Link’s house that morning was not one I was used to. I had travelled all over Hyrule with Link a hundred years before, and I had been frequently recognized and generally hailed. We’d taken to avoiding the roads and towns just so we weren’t constantly slowed by Hylians wanting to converse with their Princess. In the Castle Town everyone had known me, and the Castle was the only home I’d ever known.

But Karson and Bolson didn’t know me, didn’t recognize _me_. I was a title to them, I was a legend, a fairytale come to life. They regarded me with wide eyes and slack jaws and then surged to their feet with stuttered greetings.

Link glanced over his shoulder at me, and winked. It was the only warning I got. “About time, Zelda, your crepes are getting cold.”

The older of the two men – also the one wearing pink and animal print, which was not a common fashion statement for as far as I’d seen – immediately swatted Link, hard enough to pitch him off balance. The younger of the two swallowed and _stared_ at me, as if watching for the second head to sprout on my shoulders.

“Well, if I’d known you were making crepes, I would have hurried,” I countered, and moved to stand beside Link at the fire. I turned a smile on the other two men and asked, “Have you ever had Link’s crepes? They’re good enough to turn a girl religious.”

“Link’s... crepes?” The older man asked, suspiciously.

I nodded as Link handed me a plate, smiling at him as he surreptitiously winked at me once more.

“Do we have time for you to make them breakfast, too, before we go up to visit Purah at the lab?”

“Oh, no, no, we’ve eaten, that’s not necessary,” the younger man said, backing away from the fire.

The older of the two was still frowning at me, clearly lost in thought.

Link stood up from the cook fire and wiped his hands off on his pants. “Zelda, this is Bolson-“ he pointed at the older of the two “-and Karson. I was telling you about Bolson the other day.”

I shook hands with Bolson, and waved at the still-unsettled Karson before turning my attention to breakfast. Link’s silent advice on how to win over the people of Hyrule notwithstanding, the man did make amazing crepes.

The three of them were conversing about a place called Tarrey Town – a new village? – when I finished. I thanked Link for breakfast, saying “wonderful as always, sir knight.” He nodded acceptance of the compliment and I made my way around to the bath house.

It was barely more than a lean-to on the back of main structure, but it had a roof, floor, door, and a large basin of water. There was a wand sitting on the shelf with the towels that glittered red, and after a moment of _very careful_ experimentation, I was able to release a trickle of stored fire energy into the basin and instantly warm the water to steaming.

The man was brilliant, really.

I made quick work of the water – it hadn’t been two days yet since my bath at Impa’s, but on the other hand I hadn’t washed for a _century_ prior – and smoothed out the kinks left in my hair from the braid I’d put it in the night before. There was a Korok leaf over the door, but I was willing to let the sun dry my hair rather than hit myself with a whirlwind from the deceptively diminutive leaf.

I was back by the fire before Link had finished cleaning up after breakfast, and I received a calculated look from Bolson to contrast the awkward shock on Karson’s face. “Let me go get my things, and I’ll take you up to see Purah,” Link said, and made his way inside.

Bolson and I watched each other for a moment. He was fascinating, honestly; there were clearly any number of things roving around behind his eyes.

“Link tells me you run the premier construction company in Hyrule.”

“Link tells you right,” he answered smoothly.

“I’m curious; what goes into running a construction company?”

He paused, and I wondered if he was already guessing at my motives. He immediately launched into a description of permits, sourcing, employee management, capital and assets.

“Who are you pulling permits with? Hateno Village?”

He waved his hands in the air, indicating some murkiness with the process. “Hateno only has a minimal control over land use. Technically all the land belongs to the Duke, but the duchy is extinct; with the threat of annihilation via demonic robots hanging over everyone’s head, no one has wanted the responsibility of protecting the province. All permits are filed with the mayor as it was before, but after ninety days, they are considered tacitly approved. Fees are collected and set aside in a coffer against the return of the crown.”

“You’ve been paying permit fees to the _crown_?”

He smiled slyly at me. “Call me an optimist.”

“Tell me, Mister Bolson, what do you think should be done about the infrastructure in Hyrule?”

“The easy answer is bridges,” he replied immediately. It was clearly something he’d thought about. “That’s a four-stage process. First stage is the _major_ bridges, the absolute minimum you need to maintain commerce. Thims, Proxim, Carok. The Tabantha Great Bridge could be part of that, but there’s not a lot of people without wings on the west side of the Canyon, so it could wait for later. Second stage is the important bridges for keeping all the different provinces connected; Manhala and Jeddo in particular, and the Digdogg if it wasn’t done in stage one; haven’t been down there to see what shape it’s in. Stage three is all the minor bridges along the canyon and other rivers, the ones that make travel easier but won’t disrupt commerce if they’re out of commission for a while, because the big three are rock solid. The last thing you do are the bridges that are ornamental, the signs of Hyrule’s greatness. Those are the bridges into the Castle, the Great Tabantha Bridge if it’s not been done already, and ending with Lake Hylia. You open that one with all the pomp and circumstance of a conquering army.”

He _had_ thought about it. Link came back outside while Bolson spoke, and he was smiling indulgently at me, clearly pleased at Bolson proving his worth as a judge of character.

“You said that’s the easy answer,” I pressed. “Is it the _right_ answer? Or just the one people expect?”

He smiled at me, and I felt like I’d accomplished something. “The _right_ answer is, you repair the Temple of Time first, and restore access to the Great Plateau, so there’s someplace for the Queen to sit while her Castle’s being fixed, instead of relying on the hospitality of the Zora.”

 _Oh_ he was good. I was _absolutely_ planning on calling upon the hospitality of the Zora; I didn’t have the history with Mipha that Link did, but Dorephan’s family and mine had been close my entire life.

“I have a great many more questions for you, Mister Bolson, if you wouldn’t mind indulging me at a later date?”

“It would be my pleasure, Your Highness.”

“If there’s dirt beneath our feet, Mister Bolson, my name is _Zelda_ , as far as you’re concerned.”

His sudden smile was like the sun. “As you wish, Zelda.”

“Nice to meet you, Karson,” I said, with a nod, and then let Link take my hand and lead me over the bridge.

“You were right,” I told him, as he opened his mouth to say _I told you so_. His jaw shut with a click and he grinned at me instead.

He didn’t have long to preen, because as soon as we came down out of the model homes – which made more sense now that I'd spoken to Bolson – I was swarmed by the people of Hateno.

“Is it true? Princess Zelda, from the stories?”

“Link! Did you really bring back the Princess?”

“Is the Calamity really gone?”

“How long are you staying in Hateno?”

“What’s to become of Hyrule?”

“See? See? I told you there was a Princess!”

There were too many of them, all at once, to make any meaningful connections. I gripped Link’s hand and trusted him to lead me through as I held out my free hand to the masses. Women pressed my palm to their cheeks, men kissed my fingers, children just reached out with both hands and _grasped_.

The town was three or four times the size of Kakariko, and I got the idea that the last bastion of the Hylian race was here in Necluda.

Link’s sacrifice on the Blatchery Plain had never weighed so much as it did when reflected in the faces of a dozen Hylian children, raised without fear in a street unchanged by war.

We were followed all the way to the edge of town, where the road slanted sharply up towards the research lab at the top of the hill. Nobody seemed willing to trespass here, even a hundred years after there stopped being a king to defend the _crown’s land_. Purah likely had a century-old requisition list and hundreds of thousands of rupees in expenses she’d want reimbursed.

Ultimately, it was a much better problem to have than the imminent extinction of my people. I’d take it.

“Are there other places like this? Hylian villages?”

“There’s Lurelin, to the south; it sits at the base of Cape Cresia. Besides that, no... you can find little groups around the stables – a half-dozen at most. You’ll like Tarrey Town; it’s about half Hylian, but there’s Rito and Zora and Gorons and Gerudo there too. Bolson’s company built it.”

“Where is it?”

“On the island in the middle of Lake Akkala.”

“Pity. I’d always fancied a summer home there.”

“I think there are still lots for sale in Tarrey Town.”

“I’d rather impose on your hospitality, I think. You’ve found a great spot here, you know.”

“My home is yours,” he said, his voice suddenly soft.

“Your life, your words, your stuff, your home...” I recited in the same tone he’d adopted. “Is there nothing you keep for yourself?”

He was silent for the short distance remaining to the door of the lab, which had evolved substantially in a very eclectic direction in one hundred years but still was unmistakably _Purah’s_. I paused with my hand on the door and gave him a look meant to convey my willingness to wait a very long time for the answer.

He eventually shook his head. “No.”

There was more than that; I could see it in his face, his posture, his eyes. There was _so much more_ to his denial, but Purah’s doorstep wasn’t the place to try dredging confessions out of Link. Instead, I smiled at him and opened the door. “Perhaps we should change that?”

His eyes widened slightly in what could only be called hope.

“Change what?” a youthful voice asked from inside the lab. I stepped within to see a _very_ young Sheikah girl standing on a stool by the table. When she saw me, she gasped audibly.

“ZELDA! LINKY, YOU BROUGHT ME ZELDA!” The girl nearly tumbled off the stool as she charged at me, arms out. I instinctively leaned down and scooped her up for a hug.

“Oh, you’re alive, you’re _young_! I didn’t need this whole anti-aging travesty! I’d never hear the end of it, if I wasn’t suddenly doomed to outlive Robbie and my sister. But you! You’re back and you’re young and you can start...” she gasped again and pulled out of my arms to look intently into my face. “You can start _funding my research_ again.”

“Oh, now I _know_ it’s you,” I laughed, and set the juvenile Purah on her feet. “Link said you’d reversed your age, but it didn’t really sink in until now. Is it safe to assume there’s a stack of requisitions and reimbursements somewhere nearby?”

There was another Sheikah in the back corner – a tall, broad-shouldered man – who immediately pointed at a giant pile of paper on one desk.

Purah gestured in the same rough direction. “Yes, yes, we’ll get to that. _You’re alive!_ This is _wonderful_.”

Purah was difficult to keep up with. She had the mind of a woman who had been eyeball deep in highly theoretical research applications for a literal century, but the attention span and energy level of a six-year-old child. Another ten years, and she would be churning out the best work of her career; for now, it was like trying to hold a conversation with a squirrel.

“Wait,” I said at one point – I thought she was trying to explain the differences between her slate and the original, but she was using words like _circuitry_ and _distilled data_ that I couldn’t be sure she wasn’t making up. “Wait, Purah, before you get too far into... that. We need some information.”

“Information! Yes. Well, it _will_ cost you.”

“I am well aware. _You_ should be aware that the faster I get things done now, the sooner we have a viable national economy again, and the sooner I can justify spending the limited funds from our greatly-reduced population base on anything outside of infrastructure repairs.”

“Right! Information now, fundage later. I’ll add it to the requisitions.”

Link silently reached into his wallet and dropped three silver rupees on the table. Purah swiped them up without looking.

Because _of course_ she’d been charging Link for her assistance. Fiendish extortionist, she was.

“First. Guardians. They’re still active, but no longer Malicious. What should we-“

“Robbie,” Purah interrupted. “I’ll write to him, let him know he’s got a Castle full of toys again. He’ll be so excited he’ll do it for free.”

“Good. Second, the Divine Beasts-“

“Ooh, good call. I’ll hike up to Vah Ruta, she’s closest, and have a look around. I’ll provide a full report once I have some-“

“Send Symin,” Link interrupted, the first time he’d spoken since we’d stepped inside the lab. “Or take another Sheikah with you – one of the bigger warriors.”

Purah puffed up on her stool and planted her fists on her hips. “I’ll have you know, I have absolutely no need of any _male_ protection, Linky! I’m fully capable of-“

“You physically can’t reach the latch to get in.”

Purah fell silent at his argument, blinking several times before pursing her lips and nodding. “Right. Maybe Robbie or his wife or son could go-“

“Third,” I interjected as she lost the trail of thought. She spun back around to face me. “The Shrines and Towers-“

“I have a full disclosure written and prepared for you!” She leaped off the stool and dashed towards one of the precariously-buried desks, pulling a thick tome out of the midst with an ease only decades of practice could yield. “I talked about this some with Linky, but here’s the full write up – power source, estimated half-life, potential for repurposing – which, I’ll bottom line for you, is real low – everything you might want to know on everything about-“

“Thank you,” I assured her as she babbled on. I reached out to retrieve the book, but she whipped it away from my hand. “If I’m not getting funds, I going to have to insist on a _snap_.”

“A... what?”

“Here,” Link said, stepping forward and tossing another few silver rupees to Purah. Then he cocked his hip strangely, propped one fist on his waist, and ostentatiously snapped his fingers in the air. “Sna-ap!”

“YAY.” Purah tossed the book to me with one hand as the other snagged the rupees out of the air.

“I’m not sure what just happened,” I admitted as I clutched the book.

“Well-“

“Purah,” Link interrupted whatever explanation the 6-year-old ancient researcher was about to launch into. “What do you know about the carrying capacity of the travel function on the Sheikah slate?”

It was the right question to ask. Purah seemed to forget my existence as Link got her focused on the Sheikah slate, and Impa’s admonition echoed vainly in my ears. There was no stopping Purah once she got it in her head to adjust the slate. What was I going to do when the Sheikah Elder passed away, and I was stuck with her flighty sister as the de facto leader of the tribe? Goddess help me, I was going to need to encourage Paya's shaky self-confidence, and as quickly as possible.

It took awhile before Link led Purah around to the question he seemed to want addressed, as she had to describe everything about the slate functionality on the way to the point. Surely squirrels were easier to converse with. “Since the slate can already transport you to any location it has interacted with along with _all your stuff_ , there’s no reason its range couldn’t expanded to included extra body mass, as long as there was a substantial connection between the bodies.”

“How substantial?” I asked. I flatly _refused_ to look at Link while I waited for her to answer.

“Skin contact,” Purah said, her attention focused on the Guidance stone she was fiddling with as we spoke. “Hand-to-hand would be sufficient so long as there wasn’t a large gap between bodies. The slate isn’t quite complex enough to discriminate between masses; ideal conditions would be both persons holding the slate as well as being in contact, but there’s a certain degree of _intent_ involved in the process.”

She became more and more technical in her language, and less and less concerned with enunciating her words; I got the distinct impression she had been talking mostly to herself for a goodly portion of the past century. Eventually she took the slate, fitted into the Guidance Stone, and then told us to come back in an hour. “Or two. Maybe three. But definitely at least one.”

Link took my hand and tugged me into motion, leading me outside and around the building to where a staircase spiraled up and around the tower. On the roof of the laboratory proper, facing west, was a massive telescope. Link sat on the landing nearby and gestured for me to sit by the unwieldy device. He was smiling oddly – I could have called it _absently fond_.

I peered through the lens and saw that the viewer was focused upon Kakariko village; specifically, Impa’s house.

I sat back and looked up at Link and understood the smile. Purah was watching her sister surreptitiously, keeping an eye on her home while in her exile.

“Do you think she’ll want to go back?” I asked him, and his smile widened. “Now that we’ve sealed away the Calamity, she can go back to Kakariko, see Impa again.”

Link shrugged. “She was seen by the children here in Hateno and caused quite the ruckus. The Sheikah would see her as a child at first. She might want to get a bit older, so her words carry the respect they're due.”

I hummed my agreement and turned back to the telescope. Paya was coming out of Impa’s home and making her way down the stairs. I adjusted the scope to follow her progress, as her posture was utterly different from how she had held herself when I had met her a few days before. She stopped at the foot of the stairs to speak to Dorian, who nodded and then stepped away from his post. They both drew weapons and-

“Paya can _fight_ ,” I gasped, the image going out of focus as I recoiled slightly in shock.

“Oh, is she out with Dorian?” Link asked, leaning over to place his head between me and the view finder.

The tip of his ear brushed my nose and my eyes crossed as I stared at it and tried to sort out the sudden impulses that surged to mind. I could bite it. I could _kiss_ it, that would be kinder. A friendly nip to remind him he was _in my way_ seemed really appealing, though. Also very out of character for me, could you even imagine? Me? _Biting_ someone? Actually, if that wasn’t a reason to do it, I didn’t know what was-

He placed one hand on my knee - the other was somewhere on the seat behind me – and shifted slightly so his ear was out of reach but now the nape of his neck-

 _What was wrong with me_? He’d given me no indication that his obvious affection for me was anything more than what he had felt for Mipha, and Goddess knows how awkward _that_ was.

He leaned back, and one hand came to rest at the small of my back while the other lifted away from my knee. His face was still far too close – every minute muscle movement scattered my thoughts – and yet I felt near to panic at the idea he would draw away.

“You should watch, she’s fantastic,” he urged me, pressing gently against my back.

I would never admit that his statement inspired a sudden flare of unspeakable jealousy, but I didn’t need to, once the words tumbled out of my mouth. “I would hate to interfere with _your_ ability to watch. Here, let me get out of your way.”

“Zelda,” he protested, but he laughed as he said my name, and _Goddess_ but there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t forgive to hear him laugh. “She’s Sheikah. I know what Sheikah fighting looks like, I trained with Impa for _years_ before I went to Gerudo Town. We can go further up to the roof of the laboratory if you like, you can see most of the Towers from there.”

He withdrew a fraction of an inch, surely meaning to pull me back towards the stairs, if the way his fingers slid towards my wrists was any indication. I twisted my hands to grip both of his bracers and stop his movement. He froze, tilting his head slightly and cocking an eyebrow in an unspoken question.

“Link, Paya acts _completely different_ when we’re – when _you’re_ – not near. Surely you-“

“I know,” he assured me. “I’m not blind. But she harbors no false hopes; I have never shown her that sort of interest, and there are no hard feelings between us. She will find her poise as time moves on. She will be a good leader behind Impa.”

I shook my head. We were alone, the opening was there – I had to take it, I _had_ to. “Have you ever shown _anyone_ that sort of interest?”

He rocked back on his heels, but I held my grip and he didn’t draw away. “What?”

I resisted the urge to shrug, to sidle away from the topic. It was the safest way to determine just how wrong I might have been – about _everything_. “All the stories I’ve ever heard, from you, from the other Champions, from Impa... never any romantic entanglements, although Goddess knows they teased you about everything else.”

“None of them would say anything like that in front of Mipha, let alone you, you know that,” he countered. “Even Revali. What respect he lacked for me, he had for you two in spades.” It wasn’t the answer I was looking for, though; lumping me with the Zora Champion did my psyche no favors. His brow was furrowed, he seemed genuinely perplexed, but _Mipha_ _had thought_ -

“So there was something they could have teased you about? Gerudo Town, maybe? Did you steal one of Revali’s flames, was that the true source of his ire? Or perhaps you-“

“Zelda, where-” he interrupted, dropping into a crouch and bouncing a bit to settle his weight over his heels. He flipped his wrists suddenly and freed himself from my grasp, but only shifted so we were hand-in-hand, my fingers held firmly in his own. He shook his head and started over. “Yes, there are... _things_ in my past that the other Champions – Urbosa in particular – could have brought up, but that would have been cruel. None of them were cruel, you can’t think that.”

“Why would it have been cruel?”

He was openly frowning at me now, deep in thought, though whether trying deduce my point or failing to determine if I was serious, I wasn’t sure. “Because,” he answered slowly, enunciating each word, “my situation was hopeless.”

“Hopeless how?”

His frown dropped into a flat stare of disbelief. “What was the last thing I said to you?”

“You said your situation was hopeless.”

“No,” he sighed, shifted a bit so we were more precisely eye-to-eye. His fingers tensed with each syllable, as if willing the words into my skin. “When I... _died_. At Fort Hateno. What was the last thing I said?”

Oh. _Oh_. Oh, I was not expecting that. I swallowed and tried – and failed – to answer. Twice. Three times. The words would not come. “I didn’t... you were so... quiet... and the rain... and I...”

His eyes softened. “I have died a thousand times for Hyrule and a hundred times for you, but in a thousand lifetimes I was never allowed to love you.“

"That was the whole line?" I managed to say. It was incredibly difficult to speak, since for some reason air just wasn't entering my lungs.

Link shook his head as he laughed lightly, as if in disbelief. "Yes. That was the whole line. Did you not hear it? I was so sure you'd heard me."

I could only shrug. "I heard the last bit...? I never quite understood what you meant, what force was disallowing your caring for me. Was it an inner conflict, or-"

"I'm not conflicted, Zelda," he told me, flatly, and I felt my face go red. "If anyone ever thought I looked at you with anything other than the respect due my sovereign, I would be removed from your service if not imprisoned. Your _father_ disallowed it.  _My_ father disallowed it. It was from no lack of desire on my part."

" _Did_ you?"

"Did I what?"

"See me as something more than your sovereign? Was I more than a friend?"

"What?" He sounded  _outraged_. " _Yes_. Did you truly not know? What did you think I was saying, when I told you my life was yours?"

 _Oh_. Oh, it was too much to hope, that he had-

“LINKY!” Purah’s voice suddenly shrieked from somewhere just behind him, as a door slammed open. “Prin _cesssss_! I have SUCCESS!”

Link's hands tightened around my fingers and his eyes clenched shut around a wince of pure aggravation. He hissed in a vexed breath from beneath his teeth and, honestly, it was more reassuring than any words he could speak. He was so angry about her interruption! He wanted to have this conversation with me! Oh, Goddess, the next time we started talking about this it would finally  _get_ somewhere. 

“Cock-blocking tight-wad has no bloody idea how long a fucking hour is,” Link muttered under his breath, so softly I could only imagine that I’d heard him right. He released my hands and stood up, taking his time turning around to face Purah, where she’d suddenly appeared from a door on the side of the tower.

“Ooh, Zelda, you found my telescope! Do you like it? I’ve been spying on Impa.”

“I noticed,” I laughed, and prided myself on it _not_ sounding strained. I was probably lying to myself, but Purah definitely did not seem to notice that she had just ruined the moment I finally got the verification I had been dreaming of _for a literal century_. Although there was something darkly promising about Link’s use of the epithet _cock-blocking_. I would have to ask someone to be sure, but I _thought_ it might mean-

“COME ON!” Purah said, suddenly in my face and drawing me out of my thoughts. “Haven’t you been _listening_?” Clearly she'd been babbling since her appearance, and I had paid her no mind.

“I was lost in thought about your telescope, actually,” I lied as she gripped my hand and pulled me back indoors. Link was laughing lightly behind me as we made our way back to the lab and she danced over to the Guidance Stone that was glinting blue and orange in the suddenly-dim room.

“Linky will want to travel a bit, make sure it works-“ she scowled at him comically, offended by his lack of faith in her abilities, to which he merely shrugged “-so you and I can catch up!”

“You’ll be safe here,” he said, pausing just briefly at my shoulder to speak before walking up to retrieve his – not mine, but maybe _our_? – Sheikah Slate from the Guidance Stone.

“Well, of course she will,” Purah huffed. Link winked at her as his fingers danced across the screen of the slate. Then with a polite nod to me - his jaw still stiff with anger at Purah's interruption, and perhaps a bit of remembered outrage at my questions - he pressed his finger to the screen and then _dissolved_ into a thousand motes of blue and white light and disappeared. I heard myself gasp as my eyes followed the streams of energy that had been Link only a moment before.

“He’s okay,” Purah said soothingly at my shoulder. “He’s done it a hundred times, he’s _fine_.”

I’d done it to him during the fight with Ganon, although it hadn’t occurred to me to question how well he’d handled it until this moment. I shook my head to clear the memory and turned to Purah.

“How long will he be gone?”

Purah shrugged. “Who knows, with him? Definitely less time than the _last time_ we had this conversation. Maybe an hour?”

“But definitely less than a century,” I agreed, although I wasn’t sure if I altogether approved of her sense of humor. Nor was I willing to comment on her ability to judge an hour. “Is there someplace private we can go? Just you and I?”

“My room,” Purah answered immediately, casting a glance at Symin and seeming to catch my implication. “Back the way we came.”

I followed her back outside, up the stairs, and past the telescope. My heart tripped a bit to remember the conversation that had happened there. He didn't see me as just his sovereign. He didn't see me as his  _friend_. Goddess bless, if we could just take a step away from what was left of the world and actually  _talk_ about all of this...? The ability to travel by slate had never seemed so appealing. We could be alone at the top of a Sheikah tower at a moment's notice, and  _oh_ if the thought of being alone wasn't more than I could bear!

“What’s bothering you?” she asked over her shoulder as we climbed. She was much slower than Link, but her legs were only a quarter the length of mine so it was to be expected. I decided to answer her question honestly, but evasively. 

“First, I need to know what it means to _cock block_ someone,” I said, and she tripped on the stairs and nearly tumbled over the side. “And, second, I need a full physical exam. Do you think you remember me well enough to be able to verify my identity, relative health, and general condition?”

“Remember you?” she asked, casting a much narrower glance back at me as she clung a little tighter to the handrail and continued her climb. “I still have the notes from when you wanted to prove to your father you were strong enough to venture out of the Castle more or less on your own. I have records of every scar, mole, and measurement from when you were fifteen.”

She paused at the door at the very top of the tower – surrounded by seemingly random objects – and gave me a look that was far shrewder than any six-year-old should have been able to manage. Of course, she was closer to a hundred and forty than  _six;_ I was speaking to a researcher who only  _looked_ like a child. It was disconcerting, but she was one of the most intelligent and educated women in the world. 

“Dorephan will recognize you off the bat, as will over half the Zoras,” she said softly. “Why does it matter what one Sheikah researcher has to say?”

“You are more familiar with Hylian... _physiology_ ,” I answered carefully. “Particularly of the female type.”

“Oh!” she gasped and threw the door open, revealing a narrow bed nearly lost amongst sketches and bookshelves that occupied every spare inch of wall space. The unslept-in cot was the only indication this room wasn't merely more study space. “Oh, Zelda, do we _ever_ need to talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of the next chapter is "Like Real People Do." If you're curious about the contents of said chapter, you could take a listen to the song with that title by the genius who is Hozier. Just saying.


	7. Like Real People Do

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Purah gives our adventurers information and new Sheikah Slate functionality. What they do with it is on them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the best parts about working with the elderly (as a nurse) is the frank matter old women take with bodily functions. The things I have had 90+ year-old women say to me would blow your mind. Purah is TAME in comparison to the shit I've heard.

Link was gone more than an hour but decidedly less than a century, although it felt like a very long time, indeed, that I spent closeted in Purah’s room. There were a great number of things that my mother never got a chance to tell me, and Purah decided to run through them _all_. She seemed to forget the fact I had access to _books_ and had sat through _very_ vivid conversations with the women who had stood in as nursemaids and protectors in my mother’s absence.

“I spent my formative years with Urbosa and Impa,” I reminded her, more than once. “They made sure I was well aware of the _mechanics_ of which you speak.”

She ignored me, but I suppose there was no harm in hearing it all again – just a bit of mortification at her continued astonishment that I had spent nearly one hundred and twenty years a virgin. “You were alone! With _Link_! For _weeks_! I have a completely new respect for that man’s willpower, holy smokes. His balls musta matched his tunic.”

I did my best to _not_ consider the meaning of _that_ phrase. “He has never been anything but a complete gentleman,” I assured her.

She gestured – crudely – at my groin and I managed to stave off a blush. Trying to have this conversation with someone who appeared to be _six_ was easily the most uncomfortable I had ever been. “Him and everyone else you’ve ever encountered. Is that what you needed documented?”

“That,” I agreed, struggling to keep my voice even, “and the verification that a hundred years in stasis did not render me sterile.”

Purah shrugged. “No way to verify that, not until you’re knocked up, but from what I can deduce, you seem to cycling normally, so I would say you’ve emerged from the stasis intact.” She paused and frowned at me briefly. “It’s been a good long time since I’ve needed to even think about it, but I’m sure I have everything you might need, in that sense. Hylia preserve me, if I don’t fix this regression I’ll have to go through puberty _again._ Ugh!” She shuddered and turned back to me, seemingly eager to think of anything else. “Do you have a pack? Do you have a change of clothes?” She paused again, her eyes growing wide. “Oh, Goddesses, Zelda, do you even have a _comb_?”

I raised my hands to indicate I’d been using my fingers to tame my hair when I didn’t simply steal Link’s comb. “I make due.”

I spent the rest of the afternoon watching Purah, appearing ever more like a squirrel in spring, dash around putting together everything she thought I might need. I only rarely argued – my boots were more than sufficient, _thank you very much_ , and if I wanted fancy clothes I would likely find them in the sealed royal rooms at Zora’s Domain – because, truth be told, I didn’t have much to my name. A hairbrush really shouldn’t be used again after a hundred years, even if I _did_ know where mine had ended up.

I ended up with a doubled pack with adjusting straps that could either be slung over my back, hung from my waist, or lain across a horse’s withers as a saddle bag. Inside was everything I might need for my bath and toilet, as well as _two_ spare sets of pants and shirts to wear under my Champion’s tunic, a wealth of good socks, and a Sheikah-style outfit that looked more like the armor Link favored than the belted robes the tribe wore on the day-to-day.

“Not like I’m going to wear it again,” Purah said, dismissively.

“Are you about done?” Link’s voice – as aggravated as I’d ever heard him – called from beyond Purah’s door.

“Oh, you’re back!” I rose to my feet and made my way quickly over to let him in. “Purah was very generously giving me replacements for the things I haven’t needed for a hundred years, like a comb and socks and-“

“How long have you been back?” Purah interrupted as Link stood in the open doorway and scowled at us both.

“The better part of an hour,” Link retorted. He was _definitely_ vexed. “Symin insisted you wanted privacy, but there is only so much sunlight in a day and I’d rather not run the Princess into stalfos if I can help it.”

“Oooh, yes, get going! You can visit me whenever, with the slate! Since _clearly it worked_.”

“It’s... off,” Link said, lifting the slate out its holster to frown at it. “But, yes, it got me where I wanted.”

“Good! Good! Off you go then! Off! Get! Go get the economy moving so I can get my requisitions reimbursed!”

I slung my new pack over my shoulder and extended a hand to Link. He took it and led me quickly out of Purah’s room, down the stairs, and into the grass behind the lab. He pulled out the Sheikah slate when he came to a halt and quickly flipped through screens until he reached the map. He tugged me against him and put an arm around my waist, gripping the Sheikah slate with both hands. I awkwardly wrapped one arm around his shoulders and laid the other atop his hand, so that my fingertips were touching the slate.

“This will be really disorienting at first,” Link said, his lips distractingly close to my neck as he spoke. “We’ll pick someplace nearby, the shorter the trip the easier it is. Myahm Agana would be best, but that’s practically in Hateno Village. If you get half as sick as I did the first time I did this, the last place you’ll want to be is in the middle of town. How do you feel about heights? Maybe the Hateno tower?”

“How sick, precisely, should I be concerned about becoming?”

“I didn’t throw up, but it was a near thing.”

“If I’m to vomit, I would rather it be on the ground and not hundreds of feet in the air.”

“Mount Lanayru?”

I lifted my hand from his shoulder to swat at the side of his head. “I am in _no_ hurry to be anywhere near Mount Lanayru just yet, thank you very much. Even if I _was_ dressed for the cold.”

“Right,” he agreed, then starting moving the screen about with a finger. “Too dangerous. Covered in lizarfos. Too close to the stable. Behind a waterfall?”

I reached down and moved the screen a different direction. “What about straight south? Cape Cales?”

“No shelter,” he countered. “We might be stuck there awhile, it’s a bad place to be caught in a storm.”

I reached down to shift the screen half a heartbeat after he moved it to the west, and my fingertip landed straight on a shrine symbol. It flared blue at my touch and I was conscious of Link saying, “Well, fuck,” and then the world _dissolved_.

The sensation was so similar to my century-long commune with Hylia that I initially hoped to persevere. Unfortunately, it was only similar in the sense of being disembodied, of no longer being cognizant of my physical form. Beyond that, it was the _precise opposite_. Rather than being tethered to Hyrule, I was _severed_ from the land. I was light and shadow, air and fire, and I was cast adrift on the winds. I saw nothing, rather than everything. Rather than mercifully speeding up, time slowed down; I was trapped as a mote of energy for an eternity, although barely seconds passed before I was reformed and immediately, violently ill.

I tumbled away from Link, crawling on my hands and knees towards the searing heat and light that I simply couldn’t process the meaning of. My hands landed in sand and I emptied my stomach. And again. And _again_. When the nausea finally passed, I laid my head on the stone – barely cognizant of the steady burn of skin on hot rock. I closed my eyes against the white glare of sun on sand and then everything went dark.

I awoke to Link’s voice making soft humming sounds from somewhere nearby. When I tried to sit up, his hands immediately landed on my shoulders, holding me still.

“You’re awake! Thank Hylia, you’re awake. Don’t get up too fast, you got a bit scorched.”

“Scorched?” I repeated against what felt like a mouth full of ashes.

“Here, have something to drink,” he said as a flask was pushed into my hands. I cracked open my eyelids – my lashes were still full of sand, so the attempt was largely in vain – and tried to investigate what he’d handed me.

“If that’s water, I’m a Goron.”

He breathed a bit of a laugh, and I was sure it was relief more than humor. “It’s for the burn. Should clear your skin right up.”

“What burned me?”

“The sun, ultimately. You passed out on the rock floor of the shrine in the sun, and between the stone being hot enough to cook on and the angle of the sun itself, you took a bit of damage before I got you inside.”

I grimly lifted the flask and drank, _refusing_ to consider what might have gone into an elixir like this. Keese wings and beetles, maybe. Had he stooped to pulling the wings off fairies? Surely not. I wasn’t going to ask.

“Water for your eyes and such once the redness has gone down. The water I have is cold, and it will _hurt_ when you’re that burned.”

“Where are we? Somewhere near Goron City?”

“Other direction. We’re right outside Gerudo Town. I brought you into the Shrine to recover.”

“How did we end up here?”

Link pressed a bowl into my hands – it sloshed promisingly – and I fumbled around in the cold water until I found a cloth, wrung it out, and started wiping the sand from my eyes. I had grit along my mouth and nose, and I suspected some amount of vomit was mixed in with the sand.

Not my finest moment.

“I think you and I touched the screen of the Sheikah slate at the same time. Either you happened to select Daqo Chisay or we just made the thing glitch out, but it brought us clear across Hyrule. It was far too long of a jump for your first trip.”

I worked with the cloth for a bit longer until I was confident I was at least presentable, and then tried to blink clear my eyes and focus on my surroundings.

We were sitting near the bottom of a lift that disappeared into the ceiling, atop a broad walkway in a massive room. There was a strange green structure on the end of the walkway opposite the lift, and the rest of the room was... like nothing I had ever seen, honestly. There were other platforms, and some gated doors, and some metal blocks, and the ceiling _glowed_ , though whether by magic or design I was not at all sure.

“This is one of the safer shrines,” Link said as I gaped at the room around us. “Of all the places you could get sick, this was one of the better options.”

“Are they all like this?”

“The shrines?” he asked. I nodded, unable to tear my eyes from the spectacle around us. “More or less. Each one was either a unique puzzle or a Guardian to be defeated. This puzzle was just electricity, so it was dangerous to complete but safe to sit in.”

“How many are there?”

“Over a hundred.”

I finally pulled my eyes away from the constellations on the walls, needing to see if the expression on his face matched the almost pained way he said the number one hundred.

I couldn’t see Link’s face, though. It was hidden behind a veil.

“What are you- Why are you dressed like that?”

He raised one elegant eyebrow behind the diaphanous veil. “It’s the only way I can get into Gerudo Town. You don’t think they would just let me walk in, did you?”

He was in layers of blue silk, with his hair hanging loose beneath a head scarf, his midriff exposed, and a gaudy array of gold chains connecting the varying pieces of clothing. He had a pair of sandals sitting by his packs, and a couple suspicious piles of silk nearby.

“I knew you didn’t just walk in. But I did not think we were going into Gerudo Town! Should we not take the slate and try to travel towards Zora? That was ultimately where we needed to go.”

Link shook his head. “Did you really want to try to travel that way again so soon?”

I barely suppressed a shudder.

“I didn’t think so. We’re this close – we should stop and speak with Riju. I’m supposed to give her back something, anyways. And Bozai’s eyes will pop out of his skull if he sees you with me.”

“Bozai?”

“I’ll explain later. As it stands... you should probably dress like me, if you want me to make it into Gerudo Town with you. I’ll look very suspicious dressed like this if you’re in your Champion Blues.”

“You... have more than one of those... outfits?”

He managed to keep a completely neutral expression as he answered, “It is the fashion to have the same set in every color. I couldn’t risk drawing attention to myself by _not_ buying extra sets.”

Was he serious? He couldn’t be serious.

“I have white – which I have to recommend against, it is a _bear_ to keep clean – and green, which, honestly, would be the best for your skin and eyes. Purple would work, too... we should get the white dyed in Hateno for the next time we’re down here.”

I eyed the suspiciously small bundle of silk he gestured to and then shot him a sideways glance. “You _like_ this whole dressing-up-as-a- _vai_ thing, don’t you?”

“And why not? It’s about time my height did me a favor.”

I couldn’t argue with _that_. Daruk was probably his greatest ally, and the Goron hadn’t ever called him anything but _little guy_. Being able to sneak into Gerudo Town because he had a slight build was probably one of the first times his stature had been a boon.

“Green it is, then. Where should I-“

“I’ll go take a walk,” Link offered, quickly standing up and then dropping off the edge of the walkway.

Two hours later, I was hydrated and dressed in swirling green silks to match Link’s pretty blues as we emerged from the underground shrine of Daqo Chisay. He had taken me all the way through the Shrine, shown me where the ancient monk had sealed himself in to wait for Link’s arrival, and had walked me through the solution to the puzzle Daqo Chisay had set. My stomach was still unsettled, my face was still a bit sore to the touch, and in all my day just hadn’t at all gone the way I wanted it to. We emerged into the early evening air of the Gerudo Desert just as the sun dipped behind the mountains but before the temperature dropped to the point the silks we wore became a detriment. There was a Hylian man sitting under an awning not far from the entrance to the all-female town, and Link threaded his fingers through mine and led me straight to him.

“Bozai!” he greeted warmly, his voice pitched just a touch higher than his normal tenor. “You’ve been so kind to me, I wanted to introduce you to my lady.”

“Hello my- your what?” The man had risen to his feet quickly as we approached but seemed to be struck dumb at Link’s greeting. “Your... your _what_?”

Link slid an arm around my waist and let his fingers drag across my exposed skin. I was shocked –both in the sense of being surprised and by having actual electricity course up my spine – but got the clear idea that there was some extensive back story here that I was clueless about. I only hesitated a moment before deciding to play along; it wasn’t like I didn’t _want_ to, after all.

I shifted closer to Link and twined one arm around his shoulder, dropping my other hand to hold his in place at my waist. We were in more or less matching outfits, so the exposed skin from my hip to ribs pressed against his and I was _so damn grateful_ for the veil over most of my face; if my eyes widened a bit, at least the rest of my expression was covered. The sunburn did me another favor; perhaps that misadventure had  been for the best, after all.

Bozai’s shoulders slumped, although his eyes moved continuously over both our forms. I decided I didn’t like this particular Hylian; he was slimy in a way I hadn’t been exposed to before. “You’re... you’re, ah, interested in girls?”

Link nodded avidly. “And you were so kind to help me get her back. I wanted to introduce you as thanks.”

“I... helped... you?”

Link nodded again and then turned to me, bumping his forehead into mine playfully. “Princess,” he said, although the word sounded like a term of endearment rather than a title, clever man, “this is Bozai. He gave me those sand shoes.”

“Sand shoes?” What were sand shoes? I’d never seen Gerudo use them, were they even necessary? I didn’t bother to hide my confusion. “I’m sorry, I’ve never seen you wear them. You’re so fast on your feet, even in sandals, I can’t imagine why you would need sand shoes?”

Link chuckled as Bozai seemed to collapse in on himself further. “I did get some use out of them! But I wanted to give them back, Bozai. I had the Great Fairies upgrade them – and the snow boots! – a bit, so you’re getting more than you gave. Thanks for the loan!”

Link pulled two pairs of foot wear out of his bag and handed them back to Bozai, who did seem a bit buoyed by the idea the shoes had been improved upon. “Well... thanks! Hopefully I’ll, ah, stumble across someone more, um, likely to be impressed by them, than you were.”

“Best of luck!” Link called over his shoulder, already turning us back towards the entrance to Gerudo Town.

“What did he mean, impress? Does he think Gerudo women are impressed by men who run around in sand shoes?”

There was a thoroughly dejected sigh behind us and I felt a moment of shame for having been overheard. Link pulled me tighter against his side, and I realized he was hiding a chuckle.

“That guy,” he said in a low tone for my ears only, “was running laps around Gerudo town, trying to impress women with his sand shoes. I was having a hard time getting around, still – I hadn’t been awake very long – so I asked him about them. He concocted this grand scheme to win my affections and was really blatant about it. So I found the statue of the Eighth Heroine and I took his boots.”

“That... does sort of validate the first impression I had of him. I’m a little surprised to hear you would deceive him for his boots, though. That seems out of character for you.”

“I was dressed like this, I’ll grant you that,” he said as we walked past the gate guards unchallenged and into the cool shadows of the thick town wall. “But all I said to him was that I wanted his boots. Everything else was on him. But, no, it’s not something I make a habit of, although it’s not at all uncommon; the Gerudo call it _valsara’voe_ and Hylians use the Zora term, _catfishing_.”

“And by implying you were with me, now, you’re freed of any continuing expectations he might have had? So, in the future, we’ll just have to be sure to act like we’re involved when he’s around.”

He made an incredulous sort of sound, but we emerged then from the town wall into the sunlight and nearly walked into a Gerudo warrior.

I could tell at a glance that she was the bodyguard of the Chief. The Gerudo had very subtle differences in their arms and armaments to denote rank and I had learned them all from Urbosa, who’d worn nearly all variants as she rose through the ranks.

This particular warrior was frowning thunderously at Link, and she slammed the butt of her spear on the flagstones. We _were_ standing awful close; had Link developed some sort of relationship with a Gerudo _again_? Oh, Goddess, he hadn’t done anything with the _Chief,_ had he? He-

“Buliara!” Link greeted the towering figure, this time forgoing the slight falsetto. Gerudo women all had deep voices; he would have no issue hiding his gender in that sense. “This introduction needs to be made in front of Riju. Is she available?”

I had spent enough time with Urbosa to know that the look on Buliara’s face was _no_. I stepped away from Link, using the arm I pulled away from his shoulder to reach up and unclasp my veil, letting my face become fully visible.

“Great Warder, I come to you from the Heart of Hyrule, seeking to speak with your Chief. I seek not allegiance nor fealty, but rather a continued fellowship of our peoples. Please, allow me to embrace her, as have the long line of our mothers into our storied pasts.”

Buliara’s spear clattered to the ground as her face registered the shock that made her hands suddenly go slack. There was utter silence in the marketplace, as everyone within earshot spun to see what had transpired.

Link sighed and muttered just loud enough for Buliara and I to hear: “Riju is going to be _pissed_.”

Buliara nodded, still stunned. “It... it will be as you say.”

“The Gerudo recognize your peaceful intent, and honor your offer of friendship. You are welcome in Gerudo Town,” Link said, a but louder but still pitched for our ears alone. “Do they not teach you this anymore? Urbosa would split you like a hydromelon.”

“I have... never had reason to learn those forms,” Buliara replied, and then dipped suddenly to retrieve her spear. Her guarded expression was back in place when she stood. “I will endeavor to correct that shortcoming.” She sketched me the stiff-backed bow that was the custom among the Gerudo, and I returned it with a smile. I lifted my veil back into place – no need to make Link stand out – as we walked briskly across the market to the grand staircase leading up into the center of power of the Gerudo.

“That helm was a _loan_ , Link,” a young woman’s voice called as soon as we’d entered the dwelling. “I have four ceremonies on hold while you traipse about the-“ she had been coming down the stairs from her throne when her eyes met mine and her words faltered.

Link stepped two paces in front of me, one to my right, and went down on one knee. He’d never had to do this – I’d met all the non-Hylian sovereigns before he became my appointed knight – but he’d learned the forms from each of the other Champions and that memory had come back with the others, it seemed. “Riju, Chief of the Gerudo, I present my charge and liege, the Princess Zelda of Hyrule, High Priestess of Hylia, and heir to the throne of Hylians.”

Riju faltered, steadied herself, nodded once, and then stepped the rest of the way across the room to stand before me. She was _young_ , far younger than I thought a Gerudo _could_ become Chief. Not that I was one to talk; the last time a Princess took the throne of Hyrule before the age of 20 was over four thousand years before my birth. Impa had warned me that Riju was so young that she appeared Hylian rather than Gerudo, but actually looking in her eyes, I realized I hadn’t considered that a kinship before this moment.

Some days I felt every one of those hundred years of confinement. Today, though, I was still seventeen.

“Riju, I-“

“No,” she interrupted, and threw her arms around me. I found myself hugging the Gerudo Chief tightly, suddenly on the verge of tears. “We will teach our daughters the forms, we will be very dignified old women together, but we must not begin with formality.”

“Which is a very clever way of saying she never thought to use it and never learned it,” Link supplied from just over my shoulder. Riju lifted a hand from my back and I was fairly certain – judging by the way Link and Buliara both laughed – that she’d made a crude, inappropriate gesture at him.

“You should be happy if I do choose to ignore the forms, _sir knight_ ,” she reminded him once she and I stepped out of our embrace. “And before you ask, _no_ , I’m not making an exception to the no- _voe_ rule in Gerudo Town for you. If you want to be in here, you must continue to present yourself as a _vai_.”

“I wasn’t going to ask, Riju,” he assured her, gesturing to his clothes. “I understand, and I don’t mind.”

“Doesn’t matter if you do,” she sniffed, but there was definite warmth in her expression.

For all her insistence on remaining casual, we fell quickly into the established forms as the main room was quickly converted into a formal dining setup, with a gleaming table assembled between the two long pools of water that stretched the length of the hall. Riju and I both sat with our backs to the water, so that neither must show their backs to the door nor sit nearer the throne, and our respective Guardians seated at our immediate rights.

It took less than an hour for me to love Riju as a sister; intensely and whole-heartedly. To learn that she had accompanied Link out to Naboris to tame the raging Beast, and with her own personal sand-seal no less! She had a strength of will – not to mention upper body – that I marveled at openly. She wanted to know about my century-long confinement, as well as every memory I had of the now-legendary Urbosa. The latter was more pleasing to speak of than the former, but Riju rewarded my more pained storytelling with a confession of her own.

“We are not to become Chiefs so young, my dear friend,” she confided as our meal wound down to an end. “We Gerudo must leave the protection of our town, seek out a _voe_ with whom to continue our line. By the time I am old enough to even consider such a venture, I will be far too mired in ruling the Gerudo to just up and leave.”

“You could always be lucky and have another adventurous _voe_ like sir Link sneak into the city,” Buliara said, teasingly. I wasn’t sure who the jab was directed at, but it made my heart stutter a beat. _Had_ Link been involved with Riju? No, she was too young, like she said, she wouldn’t-

“He will be old and boring before I am of age,” Riju dismissed the notion with a flick of her hand. “No, if my line must die with me, I will have many years to find a suitable heir – _and_ to encourage her to seek her love abroad.”

“Or appoint Buliara here the temporary leadership and go off seeking your _voe_ ,” Link added, and both the women on the other side of the table cocked their heads slightly as they considered his words.

“Would you do that for me, Buliara?” Riju asked softly.

“Now that Naboris is calmed and there is to be a Queen in Hyrule once more? Having already broken bread with her? Surely we can keep the desert quiet long enough for you to find love, Riju.”

“You continually surprise me, sir Link,” Riju said, shaking her head softly. “I can only guess you learned so much about us from Urbosa. Incredible to me, that you were both her contemporaries.”

“She was flesh and blood,” I told her, speaking up just as Link opened his mouth – presumably to say the exact same thing. “She cared for me – for _us_ – deeply, as would a mother or an aunt. She was much more than a fighter; she was as nuanced as the sea.”

Riju sighed happily and sunk back in her chair. “As much as you might believe I have not learned the forms, I know that I have many hours ahead of me tonight, committing this first meeting to paper. I am unlikely to sleep; both from the sheer amount of work before as well as the happy energy from our new friendship. There are no accommodations in Gerudo Town suitable for a Queen of Hyrule – crowned or not – and while I will remedy this oversight before you next visit, for tonight you must take my quarters.”

“Oh, Riju, we could not possibly-“

“I will not use them! Please, I must insist. I will be here, in the main room, so the stairs up will be well guarded. You should take your rest where you can get it before continuing your journey.”

“Thank you, Riju.”

“Link, I want my helm.”

His lip quirked into that bare hint of a smile and he reached into his pouch to remove Urbosa’s thunder helm. “If that is necessary for ceremonial purposes, why did Urbosa have it?”

“She liked to vex my grandmother,” Riju answered immediately, as we crossed the room to the stairs at the back. “She was of an age with my mother, and Mother would regularly steal the helm for Urbosa, although it was never phrased in such a way. In the end, it was this helm that allowed her to safely control Naboris, and it was given to her for _temporary_ safe-keeping. She was to leave it in Gerudo Town whenever she was away from Naboris.”

Riju escorted us upstairs to her quarters and encouraged me to make as much use of the springs as I wanted. She collected a series of tomes from her desk, canted a nervous look at the stuffed sand seals tossed about the room, and then bid us good night and departed. Buliara went with her, and soon we were completely alone at the top of the spring; the Gerudo guards were several flights of stairs below us, and the steady fall of running water provided a low-grade rumble of back ground noise. We could not hear the inhabitants of the city below us, and they could not hear us. It should not have made me nervous, but it _did_.

“What, I wonder, do the guards think of a man in their Chief’s quarters?” I meant it rhetorically, as I stripped off my sandals and sat on the landing overlooking the city to dangle my feet in the cool waters and look out over the desert.

Link strolled over to sit beside me, just close enough to brush his arm against mine. He, too, dunked his feet in the water, and then reached up to unclip his veil and let it hang, as mine had since dinner. “They don’t,” he answered. “In Gerudo Town, if you appear to be a _vai_ , you’re a _vai_. It confuses the Gorons, but the only other option is a strip-search at the gates and that’s against the spirit of the law.”

“I suppose the men in the world who would think it offensive to dress as a woman are the precise sorts of men the Gerudo mean to keep out.”

Link simply nodded. He leaned back on his hands and tipped his head up to watch the stars come into view, one by one, as the sun sunk deeper below the horizon. The air held a chill, but the stone of Riju’s quarters was hot with stored sunlight and promised to radiate warmth well into the night.

_I’ll never get a better chance than this, right here_. We were protected by the Gerudo, the water would cover our voices, Riju had no plan to return to her rooms that night and was a consummate hostess... but how do you just start back into a conversation that was interrupted, half a day and an incidence of vomiting ago? The moment wasn’t just lost, it was slain and buried. Could I just launch into it? Should I talk about something else and try to lead him around to it? What if he was thinking about something completely unrelated, could that sour the conversation? Maybe I should ask him what he was thinking.

“Why do you doubt me?” He asked, just as I opened my mouth to speak, and answering my unvoiced question. “You say you don’t blame me for anything that happened before, but I cannot think of another reason why you would doubt me.”

“Doubt you?” I echoed, a bit dumbly. “You saved me from the Calamity, you have spent months learning this new world of ours-“ he started shaking his head, and I frowned at him “-I do not _doubt_ you.”

“Not _that_. Not my skill with the sword or the knowledge I’ve gained. _Me_. My dedication to you. My life, my _stuff_ , my home, my wealth... anything that is mine is yours, Princess. And yet any time it is possible to construe a situation as my being _entangled_ some way with another woman, you assume I have.”

“Oh. That. Well.” I took a deep breath and then plunged in. “I don’t doubt _you_. I doubt _me_.”

I didn’t look directly at him, but his sudden stillness was as clear to me as a shout. He would not speak for a long time, and I was not willing to wait him out; not tonight.

“I saw the way you looked at me, _before_. When I carried the Sword back to the Lost Woods, it gave me glimpses into your mind, your memories; it showed me how you saw me, and at the time it gave me the resolve to walk into the Castle alone. But one hundred years is a very long time, Link, and you woke up with no memory of me, of _us_ , of those moments the Sword showed me. And even if you had... the world is different now than it was then. Everything is different, now. I... could never presume to know how you feel, how you think. You seem to have your memories organized now, but this is all still so new to you, to us both. It would be wrong of me to assume you feel the same way now as you did then; just as it was wrong of me to ask whether you still remembered me before thinking to ask whether you remembered yourself. I would have to be incredibly naive to think a man who woke up with no memories would somehow hold true to a love he felt he had been denied before being forced to forget.”

He shifted slightly, pulling one foot out of the water and tucking it under the opposite knee so he could turn more towards me as I spoke. He made no other move, and I took it as a sign to continue.

“I have been wrong about you before, most notably when first we met. I assumed you despised me, that the shame I felt for myself was natural and shared by those around me. I felt my failings so keenly, _surely_ it must have colored your opinion as well. How much time did that mistake cost us? And so rather than take what I hope, what _used to be,_ and acting on it; I doubt my own conclusions. There is always another way to interpret my observations, and to date I have a very poor success rate. Perhaps you might prefer Paya, or Riju, or anyone else in Gerudo Town. Perhaps you have no desire at all for a romantic entanglement. Perhaps you’ve found, since you awoke, that you prefer men, or Rito, or I don’t even know. My point is I refuse to _assume_ and I have no faith in my ability to know what you actual want, or think, or anything-“

“Princess-”

“-and so I doubt myself. I second-guess every conclusion I reach about you, about what you might want. And it’s not like I have any idea what _I_ want, I’ve definitely never been in this sort of situation before. I have no frame of reference or idea on how to continue. Everything I thought about how my life would be after the Calamity involved my father making the decisions and my abiding by them and I definitely never thought I would be allowed the leisure to consider anything like _my feelings_ or to have any say in the matter.”

“ _Zelda_.”

I stopped talking with some difficulty and turned toward him to find his face much closer than I remembered it being.

“Stop me if I’m wrong,” he said, reaching up to thread his fingers into my hair above my ear and press his palm to my temple. He tipped my head slightly, leaned in, and kissed me. It was soft – so unbelievably soft, gentle almost, and my hand lifted of its own volition to clutch his wrist and keep his hand in my hair at all costs.

The world stopped. My breath stopped, the water stopped falling, all of existence ceased to exist as this perfect moment in time trumped all others. Actually, no, that wasn’t true – my heart was definitely not stopped. It was beating twice as fast as it had been the moment before, vibrating my rib cage and thrumming against my sternum hard enough to make my breath rattle once Link’s lips slipped free of mine and I was able to draw air again.

“Not wrong,” I whispered, and I _felt_ his mouth draw into a smile, his lips were still so close to mine.

“I’m not interested in men,” he said, and brushed his lips against mine. “I’m not particularly interested in Rito, or the other races.” Another almost teasing graze of his lips. “I don’t _prefer_ anyone else.” He moved as if to do another ghost of a kiss and instead drew back as I tried to lean forward into the contact. I made a thoroughly embarrassing, whimpering sort of sound but it made his fingers twitch in my hair as his smile widened and he shifted so we were facing each other a bit more directly. “And I _definitely_ want a romantic entanglement, as you said. Specifically, with you. If I’m allowed.”

“Who is left to disallow it?” I whispered, in the tragic distance between his mouth and mine.

He seemed to consider the question, shifting again so my legs were draped over his and his free hand could sprawl across my exposed back. His hand was _cold_ and I arched my back in surprise, which netted me a pleased sort of hum from Link. I still had no idea what precisely I was doing but I was determined to be a quick study.

“You,” he answered finally. “I suppose there’s no one else to appeal to but you. If you’ll allow me to lo-“

“Yes,” I answered, stupidly fast and over eager. I didn’t need the confession, I didn’t need his _words_ , I knew so little but already I was confident I had learned what his love tasted like. He crossed the tiny distance between us and caught my mouth in his and I reached for purchase in his clothes, something to grab and hold him to me, and remembered we were both wearing _shockingly_ little. I snaked one hand around the back of his neck and dropped the other to his knee and I held on for dear life.

The sweet melon water we’d sipped after dinner was heavy on his breath, but cloaked by the touch of salt and otherwise-indescribable _him_ that I could taste on his lips. The night air had chilled his exposed skin and made me hyper-aware of the distinction between flesh and fabric, the ridiculously thin barriers between us, and the amount of skin I had exposed to his touch.

His hands stayed where they were, though – at my temple and back – and while warm and insistent, his kisses remained chaste. When I leaned back for air, he slowly eased us just apart enough that my eyes could focus again on his face.

I took a shaking breath through trembling lips and then leaned forward to rest my forehead in the crook of his shoulder, where it met his neck. “It is not exaggeration to say I’ve waited a hundred years for that.”

He laughed – Goddess, but I would never tire of the sound! – and in one graceful motion stood up from the stone and swept me up into the air and into Riju’s apartment. “The desert is far too cold at night, we need to be closer to the fire. And Riju was right – we need to take our sleep when we can have it.”

“You cannot believe I’ll be capable of sleep now,” I argued, although I had absolutely no desire to end the evening on anything but an amiable note.

“You’re either walking from here to the stable at the entrance to the desert tomorrow,” he replied as he deposited me into the turned-down bed, “or you’re taking a sand seal, and either way you’ll be exhausted. Unless you want to try to use the Slate again?”

“I would rather never be sick like that again, and I suppose the only hope for that is to get used to travel by Slate. Could we sleep less if we plan to travel by Slate?”

He slid into the sheets beside me and immediately pulled me tightly against him, tucking his face against my neck as I wrapped my arms around his waist. The ridges of scars on his abdomen pulled at the skin of my forearms but _Goddess_ if that was anything but a reminder of how very precious this moment was. I could feel his laugh against my throat and he brushed his lips against my collarbone, laughing more as I gasped aloud. “If I had known this is all it would take for you to stop harassing me for sleep-“

“You didn’t sleep last night, _did you_?” I countered, sinking more deeply into the bedding in an attempt to put our eyes on level. He evaded by tracing his nose against the lines of my throat and _damn_ was it effective. I completely lost my train of thought for a moment and had to fight for the thread. “Link!”

“I didn’t sleep,” he told my bare shoulder and the feel of his lips on my skin nearly drove the conversation out of my mind again. “I couldn’t bring myself to close my eyes.”

I threaded my fingers into his hair and tugged, just enough to get him to tip his head up and meet my eyes. “How is this different? What kept your eyes open yesterday that isn’t keeping you awake today?”

He shifted and brought his lips against mine, and there was something about kissing him while we were laying in bed, legs interlocking and wrapped in each other’s arms, that gave the entire thing a _completely_ different sensation. I was out of breath within seconds, my heart thundering towards my throat and a tightness in my abdomen that was not at all unpleasant.

“Today,” he whispered against my lips, “I know that you falling asleep in my arms isn’t an isolated incident. I am not kept awake by the fear that these moments will never come again.”

There was too much there for me to parse – the idea that I’d given him that fear, the knowledge that I’d alleviated it, the idea that this was our new normal – and instead of trying to respond I just tipped my forehead against his. His arms tightened around me, and we laid like that until his breath started to slow and I wondered if he’d fallen asleep. I started to shift and he rolled onto his back, pulling me with him so my head laid on his chest and my legs curled under his.

“Zelda,” he asked as I allowed myself to be lulled by the steady beat of his heart against my ear, “will you tell me? What the message was, that you wanted the Deku tree to pass along?”

I had to think for a moment – how could he know there was a message but not know what it had been? The Sword, the Sword was _right there_ and awake, and if not the Sword maybe the Deku tree, himself, had told Link there was a message I had meant for him to hear. Did he only tell Link what he had told me, that a message for him should be better in the tones of my own voice?

“I love you,” I told him, tightening my grip around his waist and pressing my head against his heartbeat.

He was silent for so long that I worried he’d misunderstood, or it was the wrong answer, or-

“That was the whole line?”

I coughed a laugh and poked him – hard – in the ribs, and he shifted slightly in protest. “Yes,” I said, echoing him from just that afternoon – Goddess, had that only been a few hours ago? – “That was the whole line. I thought you knew.”

“I knew,” he answered, running his hands through my hair in a way guaranteed to put me to sleep. “I’d seen it with my old eyes, but I needed to hear it with my new ears.”

I nodded, pressing my face against the thin silk that separated his skin from mine. “I will learn to say it without prompting,” I promised. “I will learn... all of this. I am a diligent scholar.”

His chest bobbed beneath my head as he chuckled silently, but he made no reply before the sweep of his hands through my hair lulled me to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought a long time about changing this chapter to reflect the brief shot of Zelda and Riju meeting, from the forthcoming DLC. But, to quote my father, "Yeaaaaah, wellllll, no. Fuck Duke."  
> Which is a great little anecdote from my family but tl;dr I listened to a lot of really good arguments and then decided to do what I wanted, despite it. I'll build in a potential workaround in the next chapter but honestly, if they de-canonize me, they de-canonize me. I'll deal.


	8. We Can Never Go Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> White Pants, Storms, The True Ending, and Moving Forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for the delay in posting this chapter. I mentioned it on tumblr, [here](http://themarydragon.tumblr.com/post/164577396188/chapter-complete-editing-realize-theres-a) that I discovered a plot hole as I was editing, and I just could not bear to post it as written. Fixing it without going back and altering anything is a bit heart breaking - this could be better if I'd realized I was heading the wrong direction - but that's the risk I took when I began to post before I'd finished writing.  
> That said, in the meantime, my friend, [who you might remember](http://themarydragon.tumblr.com/post/160195801848/life-update) as the reason I wrote Calm Waters Run Deep to begin with, has been in the ICU and I've been a hot mess.  
> That said, I've got Chapter 9 roughed in, Chapter 10 started, Chapter 11 done, and a pretty good idea about Chapter 12, so I don't anticipate another multi-week delay in chapters.  
> Only a couple of you made me feel terrible about the delay and the rest of you are total rockstars and I love love love the fact that this fandom is overwhelmingly positive and thank you thank you thank you, you give me life.

The sensation of waking up in a strange place never changes. There was always a delay, a few moments’ time in which the mind catches up to the surroundings it has found itself in. This morning, as had happened so many other mornings in the past, I awoke and immediately slipped into a mildly anxious state as I placed where I was.

The angle was odd, but the stuffed sand seals helped me place it – Riju’s room. She had stayed down stairs, needing to record our meeting. I had come upstairs with-

 _Link_.

The pillow beside me was indented but the sheets had cooled. Where was he?

I bolted upright in the bed, although I could not say if my sudden urgency was borne of a concern of being alone or a terror that it had all been a dream.

I found him immediately. He was kneeling by one of the many pools of water, dripping onto the stones beneath his bare feet, wearing only his under shorts. His hands were in his hair, stripping the water out and tying it into a sort of top knot. He dug out another set of armor from his pack and methodically put it on; it was like the disguise he’d worn the day before, but meant to be defensive instead of simply ornamental. There were heavy greaves and an armored shoulder, but the chest was mostly left bare. The Gerudo used shields but prized flexibility and dexterity over brute strength, so the design made sense from that stand point.

Assuming, of course, the Gerudo _made_ armor for men, which, honestly, it had never occurred to me they would.

He’d turned around in the process of dressing and noticed me watching. As he settled the last belt into place, he propped his hands on his hips and cocked an eyebrow at me.

“Good morning,” I managed. My throat was suddenly exceptionally dry.

His reply was just a smile, but there would never come a day that wouldn’t be enough for me. He walked around the bed to the side nearer me and sat down carefully beside me. He reached up with one hand and lifted the hair away from my neck and leaned in to kiss the space just below my ear.

 _Oh_ , it definitely wasn’t a dream. He also _still_ wasn’t wearing very much _at all_ and my instinctive reach towards him ended with my palms on his bare chest and Great Golden Goddesses it was barely dawn and I was already a _mess_. He drew his lips along the line of my jaw and up my chin and I made the most ridiculous sound as he _kissed me_ and then I was stretching to be as tall as I could to try to make firmer contact and his tongue dragged across my top lip and I gasped so hard I lost my balance and toppled backward into the bed.

He laughed as I flailed in the sheets and pushed myself upright again, and before I could muster up anything to say in the defense of my dignity, he was pulling me into his lap and then working to untangle my veil from my hair. I’d slept fully clothed – or as clothed as the Gerudo veils and silks allowed me to be – and I was a rumpled mess.

“You have the third set of this style of clothing, yes? The white version?”

He nodded and continued carefully unwinding my hair from the clip of the veil, frowning as he concentrated on not pulling or breaking any of the strands. Bless him.

“Is that why you’re wearing... _that_?”

Another nod.

“You’re going to get thrown out of Town, you know.”

He shrugged, just slightly, and pulled the veil free. He carded my hair away from my face with both hands and smiled again, leaning forward to rest his forehead on mine.

“You’re particularly quiet today,” I said, poking him lightly in the ribs.

He caught my hand and brought it up to his chest, laying my palm against his sternum so that his heart beat was palpable; steady and slow. In a voice just barely audible, he replied, “There are no words for this.”

“Sure there are,” I whispered.

I felt his eyebrows lift against my forehead, and his tipped his chin just enough to indicate he was listening.

“You could say any number of things. _Good morning_ would have been appropriate. I believe the classic phrase is _I love you_. Which, by the way, I do. You don’t _need_ to say it, of course, now that you’ve corrected my self-doubt in regards to you. You should be aware that I now intend to assume you love me, and if you change your mind I am going to need to be notified _immediately_.”

He was laughing, in that way of his that was only discernible up close. He lifted me off the bed, set me on my feet, and tipped his face so his mouth was right next to my ear. “ _This_ lifetime,” he said, somehow making the whispered tones ring with finality. “ _This_ lifetime will be different.”

“I hope the sword is listening,” I quipped, and he spun me around and gave me a gentle shove towards the pool where he’d been bathing. I noticed the little pile of white silks sitting there, and knew he didn’t mean to spend much more time in Gerudo Town.

The Master Sword gleamed briefly, but I didn’t get so much as a tickle in my mind; if I hadn’t been looking at it, peeking over Link’s shoulder, I never would have known it had done anything to react.

That part of my power was gone, it seemed.

But Riju hadn’t needed a show of power to believe in me. Link told her who I was, and she believed him. Between Riju and Dorephan – not to mention Impa, should it come to that -  I should have no problem convincing the Gorons and Rito of who I was. And that was assuming that they didn’t simply agree with whatever Link said! Goddess, but how blessed I was to have him by my side, to have the Hero who saved me from the Calamity be _him_ and not someone I would be continually judging by Link’s memory.

But even if the Shrine hadn’t resurrected him; I had done well in the world before my power had manifested. I was known by my people and approved of.  I’d never seen my mother or grandmother _need_ the golden power, in the course of governing.

Perhaps this thing I spent my whole life seeking did not need to be an integral part of my identity. Perhaps I could let it go, like everything else from a hundred years before, and forge myself anew.

Even my relationship with Link was new. I let myself shiver as I remembered, again, the shock of his lips meeting mine for the first time the night before. He had sorted through the piles of silk, leaving the whites for me and putting the blues back into his pack, and then sketched me a playful bow before turning on his heel.

“You’re going to get thrown out,” I reminded him as he made his way towards the door.

He winked at me as he turned in the doorway to face me. Then he jumped up, grabbed the frame, and pulled himself by his fingertips up the wall and out of view.

There was something about the way the muscles in his chest and abdomen moved, shifting beneath the scars, that made the cool water of the pool immediately necessary. I plunged my face in and worked for a moment to steady my nerves before setting about the morning routine I kept while on the road.

The cycle that Purah had warned me about was, for the first time, a welcome relief. Not that I was particularly looking forward to wearing white silk pants during my bleed, but knowing my body had come out of stasis and was arguably _functional_ was a weight off my shoulders. There were no extended relations who could step in, should I not produce an heir to the throne; the biological imperative to continue Hylia’s line was arguably more important than the monarchy, itself.

I used perhaps more of the packed wool than I would have a hundred years before, but I wasn’t risking Link’s white pants to a stray spot of blood.

He looked altogether too good in the disguise, honestly.

I moved to the doorway when I was ready to leave, prepared to call up to Link. Riju was just reaching the top of the stairs as I arrived at the door, however, with a look of plain fury upon her delicate features.

“Where did you get that? What possessed you to _wear it_ in _Gerudo Town_ of all places? Come down at once!”

“He won’t come down if you’re angry,” I informed her, and the look she shot me could curdle blood. “Take it as free advice on men.”

She laughed at my amendment – a tone utterly devoid of humor, which should not be possible in a voice so young – and gestured at the roofline, out of my line of sight. “Were he one of my subjects, he would follow an order. Since he is _yours_ , he should follow _your_ order. Call him down and make him change.”

“Oh, so then he’ll be mad at _me_ for putting him within your arms’ reach? I should think not.”

“He cannot be mad at you, you are his sovereign,” she dismissed my reply with a flutter of her hand.

I let my eyebrows rise and waited for her to glance my way. She took in my expression and laughed, more sincerely this time. “Ah. I knew it was wrong the moment it left my lips. But a _vai_ can dream.”

“Keep dreaming,” I counseled, and she laughed again, loudly this time.

“When next you visit,” she told me, turning her face away from Link, perched somewhere on her roof where I could not see him, “we will flaunt our meeting with all the pomp and circumstance of our ancestors. Today, however, you will take your leave as my dearest sister, and new friend.”

“Only sister,” Link added, from directly above my head.

RIju’s face twisted into a scowl and she pulled out of the hug she was offering to me to take a step back and glare up at him. “Come down at once!”

“We’re not leaving through Gerudo Town,” I told her, taking her hands and pulling her into her chamber, so that he was out of sight and perhaps out of mind. “We will use the Sheikah Slate, and the fast-travel that Link has perfected. I am... not so well versed as he. It is practice, for me. If it is not too uncouth, might we bid you farewell from privacy, and keep Link’s appearance from causing a scandal?”

“Please do,” she agreed fervently. She hugged me, tightly, and then stepped back to glare up at Link. “You should come down so that you and your Princess might leave. She has saved you my wrath, and you owe her thanks.”

“I always owe her thanks,” Link replied, and dropped to the ground beside us. He was covered with a thin sheen of sweat, from the bright sun on the roof, and it made his exposed chest catch the light in a way I did not at all anticipate appreciating.

“Where did you _find_ that?” Riju asked, picking at the armor covering his shoulder. “It is outlawed in Gerudo Town.”

“Who said I found it in Gerudo Town?” he countered with a wink. “Your people are all over the country, Riju; it was not hard to find a Gerudo willing to craft suitable armor for the desert for me.”

Riju snorted and then turned her back to him. “Good luck with this one, Zelda.”

“Thank you, Riju. For everything. I truly appreciate your hospitality.”

She stepped close to hug me once more, and then swatted at Link as she returned to the steps to retrieve books I had not seen her set down on the stones. They seemed to be the same tomes she’d removed from her room the night before.

Link was stepping close to me, then – the smell of sunshine and not-unpleasant exertion on his skin – and wrapped an arm around me to hold the Sheikah Slate in front of us once more.

“Only one of us touch it at a time, this time,” he reminded me.

I nodded and put my hands on his, mindful of keeping my fingers away from the screen. The skin contact of my palms against the backs of his hands was completely unnecessary, given my skin was pressed against his from hips to ribs, but it seemed the most natural posture.

“Easy jump,” he said, showing me the Gerudo Desert on the map. “Just from here to the Kay Noh Shrine, near the Stable at the mouth of the desert. Ready?”

“No,” I confessed. “But do it anyways.”

The last sound I heard before dematerializing was his dry chuckle in my ear.

Travel by slate was terrible.

I lost all connection with Hyrule, with _Hylia_ , and I hadn’t realized before how essential the land was to my existence. I _was_ Hylia, somewhere deep in my biological makeup; it was my descent from Her that gave me the key to the Golden Power that could seal away the darkness. When I fought the Calamity all those years, I _was_ Hylia, I was intrinsically part of Hyrule. I could control the flora and fauna; even the minerals reformed at my behest.

This rending me from the earth and launching me skyward was, to put it plainly, excruciating.

The seconds took days to pass, and only an instant later I felt every one of my hundred years as I disengaged from Link’s arms, fell to my hands and knees, and retched onto the ground beside the Shrine.

“Alright, so, Sheikah Slate travel is not for you,” Link quipped as I staggered away from the smell of bile to land heavily on my rump on the cold stone inside the shaded interior of the entrance to the Shrine.

“I feel like it physically tears the aspect of Hylia out of my body and then shoves Her back in when we arrive,” I told him, and he blanched.

“Horses,” he decided quickly. “Horses, or on foot, from now on.”

“Horses today, if we want to get anywhere,” I agreed.

“The stable is just down the hill. I was wanting to come to this one anyways, and fetch the two horses I’d left here. Stay there, and I’ll come get you.”

I nodded, and he handed me a flask of cold water and then disappeared at a dead sprint.

When he’d first awakened, and I’d been watching him through the filter of Hylia, he had been notably slower that before the Calamity. Now, he would have beaten Urbosa in that foot race by the same margin had she actually left the same time as him. The hundred-plus Shrine he had fought through seemed to have done their job in training him.

Yet another sign this was all as it was intended to be.

And if the one hundred years I faced the Calamity while Link recovered was somehow intended by our ancestors, then could I not also believe that what was happening now was intended?

Not the bit about my kissing Link while he was disguised as a _vai_ in Gerudo Town, of course, that would be ridiculous. Rather, my loss of the ability to hear the sword, the fading of the voices of spirits, my inability to travel as Light like Link did. If I could believe that Link had to die for us to save Hyrule, could I also not believe that my power fading was simply an inevitability?

Wasn’t the loss of power a far kinder fate than death and resurrection?

I focused on the backs of my hands, laying limp on the white silk covering my thighs, and the triple triangle pattern of the Triforce glowed dimly in the shade of the Shrine. And hadn’t I just been made ill by sundering – albeit briefly – my connection with the land?

Regardless of aught else, the simple truth of the matter was, Hylia was a _part_ of me, just as my mother was, and _her_ mother, and all the other women who had lived in the aeons between when Hylia had first defended my homeland and the day she awoke within me. There was a connection there that I could not sever if I wanted to, and I knew – I _knew_ , deep in the depths of my heart – that if I called upon the Golden Power again it would come.

The Light sputtered across my fingers tips as if agreeing with me, and I clenched my fists gratefully around it.

I took a mouthful of water, swished it around my teeth, and spat it gracelessly on the ground outside the Shrine. I changed out of the Gerudo silks as I sipped on water, the movement helping a great deal. I was starting to feel recovered – either I was getting used to travel-by-Slate, or the shorter distance had done me a favor – and had about half the skin of water drank when Link returned. He, too, had changed out of his Gerudo armor, and was once again in his Champion’s tunic, hood drawn to shadow his eyes.

“I don’t want to bring the horses up here,” he declared without preamble. “Are you fit to come down? I can carry you, if not.”

It was tempted to dissemble, I had to admit, but the idea of making him worry unnecessarily diminished that temptation into distastefulness. “I am much improved. I will come down.”

“I got news at the Stable,” he said as we walked, single-file down the rather steep slope. We both needed our hands to guide our descent, but I snagged my fingers in Link’s bracer whenever possible. “The Zora are looking for me. Word is the Divine Beast Vah Ruta has powered down again, and no one can figure out how to get inside. Sidon probably could, but the Zora are... _protective_ , of him.” There was a catch to his voice that I suspected we would both always have, from time to time. Mipha’s loss would haunt us long after the others, most likely; we’d both loved her, in our own ways.

“The other Divine Beasts have likely experienced the same happenstance, if the spirits of their pilots have departed as I fear.”

We reached the bottom of the path and the thoughts of our lost friends shot out of my mind.

“That... that... that’s _Royal_ ,” I gasped. “How is that even possible?”

“His name,” Link said softly, brushing a hand across my arm as he walked past to soothe the horse I had startled, “is Storm. Because that was the only time I could catch him; I had to wait until heavy rain muffled my footsteps. He is not Royal, but rather his descendant, I presume. Impa could not confirm the bloodline; she didn’t think to track his progeny once we were gone.”

“Storm,” I agreed, and stepped forward to place a hand on his neck. He immediately turned to regard me. “But you cannot convince me this isn’t my tack and saddle.”

“I would not try. I met the grandson of one of the stable hands from the Ranch; he’d seen Storm in the hills and had been trying to catch him. When I rode him down Safula Hill, the old man just gave me the bridle, all the regalia.”

“Storm,” I said again, and then put my hand out to Link. With no hesitation, Link put an apple in my hand and then withdrew, so I could begin the arduous process of stealing a horse’s affection from my appointed knight.

“And yours?” I asked. “The fetlocks are wrong, but otherwise that is a fair copy of Epona.”

“She must be, because that’s what I named her.”

I spun around with a gasp. Storm, to his credit, did not react. He nuzzled my shoulder, requesting another apple, and I complied, while still gaping at Link’s bemused expression.

“Don’t ask, because I don’t know, but when I met her I just knew her name should be Epona.”

“And now that you remember? Is the name just?”

He nodded slowly. “If not for the world having changed around us, and her socks being shorter, I would swear she was the same horse.”

“Uncanny,” I said, mostly to myself, as I turned back to Storm. “Well, little one, you’re wearing my saddle. Do you suppose you could be bothered to let me sit in it?”

He pushed his nose against my chest, and took that to be a _yes_. I swung into the saddle, noting Link had already strapped my packs in place, and clucked Storm into motion.

Gerudo canyon was unchanged, at first glance. The various walkways and platforms dangling precariously high above us seemed like a permanent fixture of the traditional entrance to the Gerudo Desert. If I’d taken the time – before as well as now – to really study the paths along the walls, I would have been able to discern which ones were ancient and which were new; the incessant wind and sands would have torn down much of what had been in place when last I passed through this narrow corridor.

The DigDogg bridge was in surprisingly good repair, given the same factors had torn at it for the past century as the crumbling catwalks of the canyon, and we journeyed out of Gerudo in relative silence. The steady clip of hooves on packed earth was a peace I didn’t know I needed. I receded largely into my own thoughts.

It had been a week, or close enough; word was surely spreading about the Castle being empty, the Blood Moon being overdue, the sinister swirl of smoke and Malice that was the Calamity missing from the sky. The chances of anyone in the kingdom missing the combined blasts of the four Divine Beasts was laughably low. No, my people knew what had happened. They knew Link had been responsible for the Divine Beasts; they could guess he was responsible for the destruction of the Calamity Ganon as well.

Did he still long for obscurity? Had he, ever, or had it been a farce? Something he’d said to help cope with the grim reality the sort had presented as his unescapable future?

How was it even possible to _ask_ him about that? _Link, did you ever actually want obscurity?_ Out of the clear blue sky! Would he assume that I wanted it for him? Goddess protect me, would he immediately assume that I didn’t? That would be an unmitigated disaster; when I finally had everything in place so that my marrying to secure the throne was even _possible_ , he would have it firmly in mind that he had no other option but that.

I glanced over at him, to see his head tipped back, eyes closed, and a small smile on his face as he seemed to bask in the peace and sunshine.

He would never have this again, as my king. He would be responsible for my protection – for the protection of our daughter – for the rest of his life. There would be no retiring to the countryside, not for decades; Queens had abdicated in favor of daughters but it was far more common to die on the throne to give a Princess time to learn, to _accept_ , and to be sure her choice of King wasn’t disastrous.

Had the constant threat of obscurity from the sword changed him? Caused him to _want_ it? Would he resent me, for putting a price on my love? Forcing a man into a lifetime of obligations, after he’s already _literally saved the world_ didn’t seem like a fair deal.

And he would. Goddess save me, if it got into his head that it was something he had to do for the good of the kingdom, he would. Even if the yoke chafed him, he would wear it without complaint for the rest of his life. Didn’t I owe him more than that? After everything – saving my sanity before the Calamity, saving my life over and over again, rescuing me from my century-long confinement in the Castle, returning to me my birthright, and being the love of my life – didn’t I owe him his heart’s desire?

Oh, Great Goddess, what if his heart’s desire was a quiet retirement with me in his little house in Hateno? I could not forsake my throne, my _people_ , for love, no matter how deep.

Please. Please, Hylia, I beg you, make his heart’s desire being something within my power to give.

How could I ask any of this?

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps... I could simply ask what he wanted? Not here, in the wide open, but someplace quiet and private, someplace where I could beg him to be completely honest with me. I could ask him what he wanted, now that his obligation as The Hero was ended. Not what he thought he should do, but what he _wanted_.

Would he answer me, honestly? It was his wont to remain silent, to hold back, and while I couldn’t believe he would lie to me outright, I _could_ believe he would string together a series of statements that were each true on their own, but that implied a meaning that was entirely different.

If, if, if, if. I couldn’t make plans like this, I couldn’t keep dwelling on it. I would work things out with Link, with our future, or I wouldn’t. But what I _could_ do, was rebuild my country; that was what I needed to focus on, with or without him.

If he decided against it, I’d miss him, of course-

 _No_. _Think about something else_.

I struggled for most of the day with my inability to cope with the legacy left to me by Mipha and her childhood decision to marry Link, and his child _ish_ decision not to argue with her about it, and suffer in silence. I fought to think of what Bolson had said about rebuilding the infrastructure, what Riju had said about our future meetings, what _Dorephan_ would have to say about Mipha.

About how everything kept coming back to Mipha.

Even if she had unnecessarily complicated my life, she had still been my closest friend. Goddess, but I would give so much to hug her again. Just once.

We made good time, letting the horses set their own pace and eating a cold lunch as we traveled. We reached the road up the Sahasra slope as the day trickled towards evening. I wasn’t quite ready to ride back into Kakariko, even if for only a single night. I reined in Storm, dropped off his side, and let him graze while I strode over to gaze out over the land we’d given so much to save.

“Here,” Link said, handing me the Sheikah Slate. “High ground is best for getting accustomed to the map on there. And, from here, you can see most of the kingdom.”

He was right. There was Vah Medoh, directly behind my Castle at peace. Rudania peered down from the quieted Death Mountain, a week’s time solidifying the lava flows into a crust that could at least pretend to be calmed. Naboris reared up at my far left, while Vah Ruta loomed over the Lanayru wetlands at my feet.

It was beautiful, this land of ours. It was different, now; and not just in the decimated-population sense. The years the realm had slept under the threat of the Calamity had awoken a wildness about Hyrule that had been tamed – _domesticated_ – long before my birth. The people who had civilized the land had been destroyed, their works erased, but it was not Hylians who made Hyrule. No, it was Hyrule that made us Hylian. I could see it, from here; the shape my rebuilding could take. I could honor Hyrule while still furthering the means of its people.

It could be better, I decided, right then. I was not tasked with recreating the Hyrule of my youth, but rather the opportunity to craft something altogether new. I could hold tight to the symbols of our people, rebuild the Temple of Time and the Castle proper; but I could also work with the land. I could direct our growth in a more organic way, incorporate the culture of the other races rather than hold Hylians separate.

It was a lifetime of work, a monumental task I was guaranteed to leave unfinished.

It was, flatly, daunting.

What was the saying? A journey of a million miles began with a single step.

I lifted the Sheikah Slate, opened the map, and forced myself away from the big picture, where I had always been the most comfortable. It was the details I had to learn, the individual steps that led to the greater result I wanted. I had to start seeing the trees rather than the forest.

“We’ll make our way to Zora’s Domain,” I announced, glad Link was nearby to at least give the appearance that I wasn’t simply talking to myself. Again. “Divine Beast Vah Ruta looks like it stopped working...”

Because Mipha’s spirit had departed. What would that great Beast be like, without her haunting its halls? Could I even-

 _No_. The trees, Zelda, not the forest. “Let’s investigate the situation,” I said aloud, hoping to force my mind back on track. But Mipha’s passing was not a _situation_. I shied away from the minutiae because this was where the people were, the _pain_ resided here in the details. The bigger picture was safer, more abstract, more insulated from the agony that was Mipha’s death.

We would go to Zora’s Domain. We would inquire there about Vah Ruta, request Dorephan reach out to the other races about _their_ Divine Beasts...

“Mipha’s Father,” I sighed. Here, too, was a detail I could not step past. Seeing the symbol for Ruta on the map was too impersonal; I let the Slate drop to my side and looked out towards the Castle once more. “I believe he would like to hear more about her. The least we can do is visit him and offer him some closure.” We would not simply treat the trip to Zora’s as a political mission or a fact-finding venture. He was a grieving father; one hundred years was not long enough for a Zora’s heart to heal.

“Although Ganon is gone for now, there is still so much more for us to do; so many painful memories for us to bear.”

Link’s breath hitched, but it probably always would. _Painful memories_ was the short version of the story of his life, after all.

It would get better, it _would_. We would make new memories. We would create things that brought joy, rather than pain. We would focus on _creation_ rather than _destruction_.

Goddess bless, to avoid the bigger picture was to avoid _hope_. I would have to find a middle ground.

Perhaps... I shot a look out of the corner of my eye at Link, to see him standing at my shoulder, gazing expressionless towards the Great Deku Tree, flowering an incongruous pink. I could help him make new memories, and he could help me find balance. He had always managed to keep the bigger picture in mind, even while being torn in a million directions at once.

“I believe in my heart,” I continued, the words seeming more real when spoken aloud rather than just existing in my mind, “that if all of us work together, we can restore Hyrule to its former glory. Perhaps, even beyond. But it all must start with us.”

I was the reason we were stopped on this hill, rather than off making a difference in Hyrule. I remembered making a similar sweeping statement, a hundred years before on a hilltop in Eldin. Link had reminded me, then, of our immediate goal while I had been lost in eventualities and potentials.

The more things changed, the more things stayed the same. I turned and started towards the horses. “Let’s be off!”

A moment passed and I heard his footsteps behind me, and I was thrown, once more, into the past. Goddess, but it was true – everything was different and nothing had changed. I was stuck in my head, talking to myself aloud and putting on a brave face. I was caught up on what-if’s and maybe’s, and barely managing to keep myself focused on the here-and-now.

If I wanted a different future, I needed to make changes in my present.

I slowed. Stopped. The last few days spun through my mind as I thought about the already-numerous ups and downs Link and I had weathered, to come to this new place of peace.

I was not ready to put everything on the table. It was not fair to him to thrust all of my hopes and dreams on his shoulders, not when he was still finding his feet. A week before he hadn’t remembered _himself_ , I owed him time. 

I owed him a lot more than time.

“I can no longer hear the voice inside the sword,” I confessed. It was all I could give him, at the moment, and I had to give him _something_. “I suppose it would make sense if my power had dwindled over the past one hundred years.” I turned back around to face him, to see everything I could have expected on his face: concern and confusion, and the lingering fear of mistrust. After everything, he thought I _doubted_ him! I could remove that, at least. I could start this, _us_ , anew. “I’m surprised to admit it, but I can accept that.”

I couldn't help but smile as I watched the negativity drained from his expression, and he gifted me with a rare smile. He jogged over to me, reaching out to place his splayed palm against my side, and pressed a kiss to my forehead.

 _I don’t need it if I have you_ , I could have said. _I’m not afraid anymore. I don’t doubt anymore. I want to be someone – something – more than just what I was._ The smile as he stepped away and pulled me towards the horses – towards Kakariko, and Zora’s, and everything beyond – told me he knew.

For now, it was enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the things I liked least about Breath of the Wild was the very odd, stilted language we got in the "True Ending." I think I've done an okay job of explaining why she would say what she said, but it's just... oddly put together.  
> That said, I've been wrestling with this for three full weeks now, and I am incapable of actually *seeing* it anymore. If you find a typo or glaring error, sing out so I can fix it. <3


	9. Time After Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Silent Princess, Zora's Domain, and the balcony scene, redoux

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, thank you to everyone for being so wonderful and supportive as I've waded through the hellscape that was my last two weeks. A very dear friend died suddenly at the ripe old age of 41 on September 2, and I've spent the previous weeks helping his wife (who was the maid of honor at my wedding and is responsible for saving my life, so I'm pretty ride-or-die for her) and their _four children_ try to find their equilibrium. Steve did not think he was going to die - he really thought he was going to beat his cancer - and so he left a lot of things undone.  
>  Now that I'm home, I've got a lot of things I suddenly Have To Do. Life Insurance, a will, a _living_ will, protections for my husband in case something happens to me... But I walked into a Tropical Storm Warning, instead, and between storm prep and laundry and unpacking, I'm up to my asshole in alligators.  
>  This story is mostly finished, it will NOT be abandoned, but I spoiled y'all with frequent updates and that's just not going to be the case anymore. They will be less sporadic than the last couple, though, so we've got that going for us at least. <3
> 
> tl;dr Life Is A Thing and I love all of you so, so much for all the kindness and understanding and _love_ I've been getting. You are the best.

“We could leave the horses here, trust the Sheikah will claim them, and take the shortcut into Zora’s Domain,” Link said from somewhere over my shoulder.

I didn’t immediately acknowledge his words, as my attention was grabbed by the view from over Storm’s back. The field above us caught my eye as I had moved to mount the graceful white stallion and for a long moment there was nothing else I could do but stare.

I was aware of the return of Silent Princess. I had been one with the land for so long, I couldn’t help but know exactly what grew, and where. During the Calamity’s blood moons, I had channeled the latent power of the land into the resources Link had utilized and restored them; anything to give him some advantage. I had felt him plucking the delicate blossoms, had noted the dozens of places they now lived, but this?

The entire hillside was covered. This, I had not anticipated.

“Everything is wild, now,” his voice carried softly from just over my shoulder. “There are fewer people plucking them to give to their true love, as well, which has to help.”

“I feel like I should collect some, gather seeds while I can, to study-“

“I have about a dozen in my pack you can have,” he countered. “But those? They’re not going anywhere, not anytime soon. There’s no rush to collect them anymore.”

I nodded, still a bit thunderstruck, and swung onto Storm. We were well on our way before I remembered what he’d said about a shortcut.

“My apologies, I was horribly distracted. What were you saying? Another way into Zora’s, without the horses?”

“Glider,” he answered with a shrug. “I got used to looking for high points to jump off-“

“I am _well_ aware,” I sniffed. “Your first jump from the edge of the Great Plateau nearly stopped my heart.”

If I glanced back, I would see the hunch to his shoulders and scrunch to his forehead that indicated a chuckle, I was sure of it. He didn’t reply, though, and I let the silence stand. The hillside covered in Silent Princess had sparked too many memories; that perfect afternoon in the tall grass with Link, the days spent spreading flower seeds, the time my breath had caught when Link had called me _his_ Silent Princess. Perhaps I, too, could thrive in this new wilderness.

We rode into Kakariko after the sun had dipped behind the Pillars, leaving the shadows deep in the quiet streets. For as little as the tribe seemed to sleep, they made up for it with an abiding sort of calm that was uniquely Sheikah. Our arrival was met with nods and subdued waves that made it impossible to remember why I had wanted to stay away.

And then Paya saw us, squeaked, and darted up the stairs into Impa’s house.

_Right_.

I sighed, but Link laughed and tugged my hand, leading me into the inn. He told the narcoleptic at the desk we had horses to be minded – which actually seemed to wake the man up a bit – and then led me by the hand up the stairs.

“You sleep,” he directed, and I almost laughed at the note of command in his voice. “I will go speak with Impa, and we can be on our way to Zora’s at dawn.”

“Please tell Paya I won’t bite,” I requested, already abandoning any hope of convincing him to sleep. He’d slept well the night before, and rested – if not actually _slept_ – the night before that, and was likely to be awake for days as a result. I laid my things down on the foot of the bed I’d slept in when last we were here, and turned to attempt a joke about Paya’s apparent dual nature. Link was close behind me, though – far closer than I’d anticipated – and his lips met mine, banishing the words from my mouth.

I gripped the collar of his hood as his hands slid up into my hair, and dedicated myself to _learning_ , to returning his kiss, to giving back everything I was receiving. Our mouths opened, and I sunk deeper into him, releasing his hood to grip the belts at his waist. His tongue traced the line of my lip and I _gasped_ -

-pulling the breath from his lungs, and he _gave it_ , slowly pulling it back when I shakily exhaled a moment later.

He pulled away, just slightly, kissing me lightly before actually withdrawing.

“Impa raised her on stories of your love for me,” he whispered, as his hands slid down my arms to untwine my fingers from his belt. “She knew I loved you before I’d remembered it, myself. You have nothing to fear from Paya.”

He pulled my hands free, kissed me again – once, twice, just barest brushes of his lips to mine – and then disappeared out the door.

I listened to him make his way out the rooms, latching the door behind him, and then his footsteps descended the stairs and out of the inn.

I dropped heavily onto my bed, on my back, and clutched the bedding with both hands at my sides, my heart pounding in my ears, and despaired of _ever_ finding sleep.

At some point, it found me, because Link woke me with a kiss to the forehead in the still predawn twilight. “Impa can’t come with us to Zora’s Domain,” he said softly, “but she has already sent word ahead. The roads are reportedly clear, and we can brunch with Dorephan if we leave soon.”

I nodded and rose. Link disappeared again, giving me the privacy I needed to attend my morning toilet and the blessed burden that was the return of my monthly courses. I washed quickly, packed my things, and met him in the chill dawn air. He stood on the packed earth of the street, hood thrown back, Epona’s head pressed into his chest as Storm tried to rummage through his pockets for apples. He looked up at me and smiled.

I had seen that smile on his face before. I’d seen it on a balcony in the moonlight. I’d seen it on the side of a cliff, on the worst day of my life. It was calm in chaos. It was peace in war. And it was love – pure, unapologetic love.

I couldn’t help but immediately believe I was doing this _right_. He had been in such turmoil when we’d first been reunited on the Field in the aftermath of the Calamity; to think he’d found a measure of peace in the days since was a weight off my heart.

And maybe he wouldn’t want this to continue. Maybe he wouldn’t want to stay on the road, maybe he would want to put the sword away and sow, rather than reap. But for now – _for now_ – the sword and the horse and the road, the soldier and the scholar, was where he had found contentment. I could not ask for more.

I _would_ not ask for more.

I’d have to find some other way to let him know the options were open.

Storm met me halfway between them and the inn, and I immediately produced a hunk of sugar cane from my pack. Link made some half-hearted comment under his breath about fattening up a perfectly good horse, and I made a show of ignoring him. Storm almost seemed eager for me to be in the saddle once more, and I reflected on how much better he seemed to be getting along with me than his progenitor ever had. I had to think it was something that had changed within me, rather than anything I was consciously doing different.

The silence of the ride that morning – with the bite of the mountains in the air – let me sink down into my thoughts once more. Link was watching the road, albeit with less concern than in the past, and Storm was happy to prance in Epona’s shadow.

I had to conclude that I was far less conflicted now than I had been a hundred years before. The knowledge of the ages awakened by Hylia had a lot to do with that. I understood my ultimate place in the world. To think, I once doubted I was actually of royal birth!

No, the problem now was not that I didn’t know who I was, or what my path was, or how to accomplish my tasks. My prime concern now was with what I _wanted_ , and how that related directly to what Link wanted. I didn’t doubt he wanted me, but I did doubt – strongly – that he wanted anything to do with the heavy weight of the crown that was the cost of a future with me. I knew as an inescapable fact that Link would never want to be compared to King Rhoam, and to be his successor would make it nearly impossible to avoid. Even a hundred years after my father’s death; the next king is always just that – the next king.

It was a rule I could not change; its necessity was proven within my lifetime, with my father assuming the throne upon my mother’s death. There _had to be_ a king in place to protect the Princess should something happen to the Queen; had I been forced to assume the throne when I was six, I had no doubt that I would have fallen to the Calamity the moment it emerged to attack the Castle. The line of Hylia would have ended with me, and Hyrule would have fallen into ruin.

I sighed a bit too loudly, and Link reined Epona closer to Storm. “What’s on your mind?”

Well, shit.

“Despairing over the complete destruction of all the established structures for nobility and the monarchy,” I answered, mostly honestly. “There are some rules that can be changed, and will, while others are inviolate. It’s a completely different matter to create a government, rather than merely inheriting an intact one.”

“I suppose you would have to find _some_ thing to worry about,” he teased.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You worried about unlocking your power. You worried about your power fading. And now you’re worried about bureaucracy. Have you never thought to just enjoy the day?”

Goddess bless, I loved this man. “No,” I said, this time with complete sincerity. “You shall have to remind me to do so, frequently, and keep me grounded in the present.”

He smiled in that almost-invisible way of his, and seemed content to press on, but I couldn’t let the entire opportunity slide. I was an abject coward where this subject was concerned, but I had to start _some_ where.

“Link,” I said, and he glanced back, one eyebrow cocked with an answering query. “If I fail to enjoy the present, you could be said to think too little about the future.”

His other eyebrow went up, as if I’d surprised him – although whether from being right or wrong I wasn’t sure. “Do you disagree?”

He considered it for a moment and then nodded.

_Good_. “Very well, then. Prove me wrong. What role do you see yourself playing in our new Hyrule?”

He shrugged. “Whatever role you give me, Princess.”

My heart sunk into my gut; I was instantly sick to my stomach. Goddess, but that was the worst thing he could have said. Even if he’d said he wanted to retire to the countryside, hide out in Hateno and never reemerge, at least that would have been what he _wanted_.

“Well, then,” I retorted, managing – however poorly – to maintain a casual tone of voice, “if I must continue planning the future for you, you should continue enjoying the moment for me.”

He went silent, but I did not look over to judge his reaction beyond that. I had the utmost faith in Link’s ability to swallow his words and get lost in thought, and I was confident he would choose that course of action now.

We didn’t speak again until we clattered across the final bridge into Zora’s Domain, and then it was just the directions and greetings standard upon entering a settlement.

Here, finally, was a land untouched by Ganon. The Zora were thriving, their city was the sparkling jewel of Hyrule, and the people were precisely the same as I remembered them.

The magnificent statue of Mipha in the heart of the city was new, though. I don’t know why I didn’t anticipate it; the Zora were master craftsman, and she their most beloved daughter.

It was her – Great Golden Goddesses, they’d even carved her eyes somehow, to make them sparkle like she was always on the very verge of tears, always brimming with empathy to the point of bursting.

Here, finally, was the price of victory: her home, untouched by war, although her spirit lost forever.

I knelt at the base of the statue, pressed my forehead to her feet, and gave myself permission to cry.

I did not weep. I did not wail. This was an old pain, a scar to ache rather than a wound to bleed. I watered the stones with my tears, silently, but without shame; if there was a place in the world to mourn my friend, it was here.

“She would not want you to cry,” an unfamiliar voice said, near to my shoulder. I looked up to see a young man of the Zora, in all the trappings of royalty, standing between myself and Link.

I could count the number of people who yet lived that were allowed so close to me by my appointed knight on one hand. Link wasn’t even looking at this newcomer, standing a few feet away, eyes simultaneously locked on the face of Mipha’s statue and focused a hundred years away.

“Sidon?” I guessed, rising to my feet. “Goddess bless, I did not recognize you!”

“Were you travelling with anyone but Link, I would not have recognized you either!” he returned, warmly, and then gave me a bow that could not be emulated by any other race, a fluidity only seen among the Zora. “Welcome back to Zora’s Domain, Princess Zelda. I trust you would like to speak with my father?”

“I would,” I agreed. “And you. We have much business to discuss, but I would like to delay that, if at all possible?”

“Delay?” Sidon asked, tipping his head to one side. “Whyever for?”

I turned and indicated his sister’s statue with both hands. “I do not wish to delve too deeply into the future without first honoring our past.”

Sidon – who seemed to be a very emotionally charged young man – was immediately moved by my statement, and agreed effusively. I reached back for Link’s bracer, tugging him out of whatever memory had drawn his attention away. He shook himself, met my eyes, and nodded. I released him, turned back to Sidon, and indicated I would follow him to his father.

Link settled into place, three steps behind.

“Zelda!” Dorephan bellowed as soon as I stepped into his line of sight. “Princess Zelda, Destroyer of Malice! You haven’t aged a _day_.”

“I’ve aged a good few months since last I saw you,” I countered, and his laughter echoed in the hall.

“Father, Zelda wishes to speak to you of my sister,” Sidon prompted as soon as his father’s laughter had stilled.

Dorephan sighed. “You heard, then? Vah Ruta has suddenly gone still. I fear...”

He trailed off, shaking his head, and I moved to stand before him. “I can tell you what I know of her passing,” I offered. “Her spirit kept me company, of a sort, for the many long years of my imprisonment within the Castle. I believe I might have heard her last words, both in her lifetime and before her spirit departed. I would like to speak of _her_ , before we worry overmuch about Vah Ruta.”

King Dorephan regarded me silently for a long time, the continuous run of water the only sound in his chamber. Neither Sidon nor Link stirred; no one entered or left.

“Bring the Princess a chair,” Dorephan told his son, in a tone softer than I believed the giant Zora could produce. “I would hear of my daughter.”

The funeral rites of the Zora, I learned that week, were only rarely enacted. Their culture was dependent upon water, and the transient nature of the rivers they dwelled within informed their views on life and death. Mipha, however, was revered by their people in life, and exalted in death; she had not followed a common path in life and so would be given an uncommon observance of her untimely death. There were many who would never forgive the Hylians who took their beloved Princess from them, but Dorephan and Sidon were not among them. My words upon my arrival to Zora’s Domain sparked a period of formal mourning that allowed the royal family to finally put their beloved Mipha to rest.

In all, it took four days.

We spent the rest of the day I arrived – and all of the second – exchanging memories of Mipha. Dorephan often needed to stop and ruminate on my words, which I knew to be a gesture of great respect as well as the Zora’s way of committing things to memory. For as long-lived as their race was, memory was practically sacred, and the gift of our memories of Mipha was the most valuable thing I could offer her family. Link was present for all of it, sharing when he could and absorbing what he had not yet remembered for himself. Sidon’s memories of his sister all involved Link, and the two of them shared a great many tearful laughs at each other’s expense.

The third and fourth days were very heavily ritualized, and I was honored to be allowed to merely sit and witness a rite that few even knew the Zora performed, and no living outsiders had ever seen.

I retired to my room every night exhausted, changed into a dressing gown, opened my balcony window, and crawled into bed, confident Link would scale the wall and appear in the doorway within seconds of my head hitting the pillow. I managed to stay awake until he slid into the bed next to me, but not a moment longer.

On the fifth day, with Mipha’s soul honored and put to rest, the leaders of the other nations that called Hyrule home began to arrive. It was harder for the Zora to visit the other realms than it was for those races to visit Zora’s Domain, so Dorephan’s home had long been the agreed-upon meeting place for the heads of state of Hyrule.

This would be the first such meeting in my lifetime; none had happened since my mother’s ascension to the throne, a hundred and twenty years before.

The Goron Boss, Bludo, arrived first, taking the honor very seriously once he’d done the research and realized the importance of the event.

The Rito Elder, Kaneli, arrived at twilight, having the farthest to travel but having the benefit of flight. He was reminiscent of a wise old owl, and seemed to be immediately enamored of me. He didn’t believe Link was actually the same Champion who’d been at Revali’s side a hundred years before, although he had no problem accepting that I was the same Princess. Link encouraged me to just let it go.

Riju was set to arrive the next afternoon, so after a semi-formal state dinner, I retired early to my room.

I would have to present my plan for a new, unified Hyrule the next day. I sat at the desk in the royal suite, determined not to dwell on it being my mother who had last used it, and diligently made notes for the summit the following afternoon.

Reestablishment of the nobility was a priority, with the five previous Duchies, a reduced version of the Ministry, and a focus on service to Hyrule in the previous one hundred years. No expatriates would be considered for the new nobility. Link had given me a series of names for the new ministers – Bolson for Infrastructure, a trader named Beedle for Finance and Commerce, an archeologist in Gerudo named Rotana for Information, and Purah – once she grew up a little – for Science. The King was traditionally the Minister of Defense, which was something else we had been side-stepping around. He hadn’t offered any names up for that post, and I hadn’t asked for any.

I had an idea about the new Duchies, but that was something that could be delayed a bit, until the Ministry could put together a framework for determining who would be the best defenders of the five provinces of Hyrule. Here, again, I fully intended to put Link forward, since, again, the King generally came from one of the five Duchies, so that he was sure to have the sort of educational background that he might need, in the worst case scenario.

My father had been the second son of the Duke of Hebra.

I’d never been fond of Hebra.

As much as Link would probably prefer Faron – where he had a stake in the remains of Deya Village – or Necluda, where his house in Hateno lie, he was the best choice for Tabantha. His mother lived near Lake Illumeni, and as such he had the best claim to that land. There weren’t many people living in Tabantha to choose from, but that also meant that there would be fewer obligations for Link and he could designate an heir with impunity.

Assuming, of course, he _wanted any of this_.

I sighed and set the papers aside, pushing away from the desk and crossing over to the balcony. The sun was setting, although it was impossible to see in the bowl that was Zora’s Domain. On a whim, I went to the closet and began to rummage through my mother’s old things.

The Zora took immaculate care of the royal suite, knowing this was where the Hylian royalty would always retreat to in case of emergency. This was the preferred site for the five nations summits, as well, and rather than attempt to travel with finery, a set was left here in perpetuity.

Within my mother’s closet were the traditional dresses of Hylian Princesses, Queens, and Priestesses. My mother’s taste was different than mine – she’d seemed to prefer pink, for some reason – but one of my blue dresses was hung carefully within. There was a long line of the simple white dresses worn in the worship of Hylia, and even though I had once sworn never to wear it again, I stepped into the familiar garment. I braided my hair away from my face and went back to the balcony.

I knelt on the floor, tipped my chin up, and watched for the moon to rise.

There was a peace in the familiarity, and I was anxious enough about the next day to crave any source of tranquility. Knowing I could literally make the hours pass quicker was also an allure, I admit.

As my mind slipped into the trancelike state I’d perfected over a hundred years before, and then dwelt in for a century, I immediately felt the slow simmer of Hyrule beneath me.

Death Mountain slumbered, ever fitful. The waters of the River Hylia bubbled out of a thousand springs. The spirits of the three Great Dragons rose out of the earth and spiraled into the sky, connecting Hyrule with the heavens.

It was an uncountable number of independent entities strung together into a perfect machine. Every blade of grass had a purpose – to hold in the top soil, to provide shelter for a cricket, to feed a grazing goat. It was a teeming milieu and it was _home_. It was my life, my blood, my heritage, and for so long as I still reached for this connection, I could never lead it astray.

I couldn’t feel _Hylia_ , Herself, anymore, but neither did I feel like I need to. The Golden Power was not Hers, but rather Her charge; She protected it and defended it as Link protected and defended me. The Triforce hovered just beneath my consciousness, a golden promise. I could call it to my fingertips on a whim, though I would not wish to waste it.

I had everything I needed. If it was not within me, it was around me. There was nothing before me that I could not surmount.

I opened my eyes to feel an ache in my knees and a well of serenity in my heart. The moon was high in the sky – several hours had passed – and I was framed in a perfect square of moonlight.

I could not help it – it was a different balcony, in a different place, under different circumstances, but I could not help but remember a night just like this one, a lifetime before – and I glanced behind me, expecting to see Link there.

He was.

He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, one elbow upon his knee, the associated hand curled into a fist and propping up his chin. Watching me.

My heart surged into my throat. Goddess, please, let this be a memory he still has. I spun around to face him, although I didn’t close the distance.

“Enjoying the view?” I asked, desperate to keep my tone light.

“As much now as I did then,” he confirmed, and I couldn’t help but grin like a fool. He smiled back, and it was all the encouragement I needed.

“I knew, then, that you loved me,” I confessed, and his smile shifted. It was almost sad, and I slid across the floor until we nearly nose-to-nose. “What is it?”

He shook his head, shifting his weight so he could reach for me, lifting me easily into his lap and folding me into his arms. He rose from the floor, carried me to the bed, and curled around me in silence.

“Link?”

“Another time,” he whispered, wrapping his arms around me. “You stayed up far too late tonight, you’ll be exhausted tomorrow as is.”

I shook my head and peeled his hands away, sitting up in the bed and turned to face him. He rolled onto his back and canted a confused look up at me.

“No.”

“No?”

“No. _Not_ another time. Goddess knows I’m terrible about asking you things, don’t put me off when I actually do.”

“What have you not been asking me?”

“Damn it, Link, don’t change the subject!”

“Why are you so angry about this?”

I wasn’t angry about _this_ , but I didn’t realize until he asked. I wasn’t angry at all, really, just frustrated and confused and so very tired of avoiding the subject of our future but never having an easy inroad. I sighed and threw myself backward onto my pillow with a huff.

“I’m not,” I eventually confessed. “I’m just... conflicted. I have no idea... of how to even explain how I feel.”

“Try.”

“You first,” I countered.

He went silent for a long time, and I almost wondered if he was hoping I’d just fall asleep. I poked him in the ribs and he took my hand, shifted my arm, and threaded my fingers through his. I kept waiting.

“I remember that night,” he said after taking a long, slow breath in. “I remember _everything_ about that night – you sleeping the wrong way in the bed, to watch me, and the look on your face when you glanced back to see me, and the way you fought with yourself about what to say to me... I remember it all so vividly. I used to wonder what might have happened if either of us had actually seized that moment, whether the events in between would have been easier or harder to live through, and as terrible as it all was... I’m almost glad we did what we did.”

“Almost?”

He smiled, just a bare hint of movement at one corner of his mouth, but it was enough. “Almost.”

I could press for an explanation, but my own imagination was equal to the task. I felt a little flutter in my chest at the idea of having confessed my feelings that night, and getting a one-hundred-year head start on this mess we were in. Maybe we could have talked, then, about our options, when it still would have seemed like the choice would never be mine.

“Your turn,” he reminded me softly.

“I feel... like I am continually torn between _need_ and _want_ ,” I told him, carefully. “I know I should be sleeping, I know I have all these obligations tomorrow, but I _want..._ ” I rolled over and pressed my free hand to his face. “I _want_.”

I watched his throat shift as he swallowed thickly and then slowly rolled to face me, freeing my hand to grasp my waist and pull us together in the middle of the bed. He was looking straight in my eyes, so while I didn’t exactly understand the darkness in his gaze, I couldn’t mistake it, either. It made my abdomen clench against a sudden warm temerity that was not at all unpleasant.

“Someday,” he whispered, “but not tonight.”

I nodded, and then shook my head. “You’ve said that before, too.”

“In Akkala; you asked me to stay when I knew there were Yiga?” He tightened his fingertips on my hips and brushed a kiss across my lips. “And here we are.”

“And the night in the Castle?”

He frowned at me. “Which?”

“When I asked you if you read my books while I was sleeping?”

His face cleared, and he almost smiled – almost, but it was enough. “I didn’t tell you _someday_ , then, I told you to ask me another time.”

“I’m asking now, then.”

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, as if casting back for the memory. “I had said yes, at the time, and you assumed there was another answer-“

“Oh, Goddess, did I ask you something you don’t remember? I’m so sorry, that was callous of me, I-“

“I remember every second of every day with you,” he countered softly, and I shut my mouth with alacrity. “The things I wanted to tell you, even then, that I knew I couldn’t...”

He took another deep breath in, and then the words started to just pour out of him. “I considered telling you all the things I did while you slept, so you knew I wasn’t just burning the midnight oil in your study... I was collecting _seeds_ , for one. I considered saying any number of completely inappropriate words that I knew you were _avidly_ waiting to be taught, particularly in Gerudo, if only to distract you.”

I laughed, but he wasn’t done. “I wanted to tell you that you looked like a perfect golden goddess when you slept, and if I sat in your study I could be close enough to you to be sure you were safe but far enough away to not be distracted by the way you sometimes said my name in your dreams.”

There was suddenly a huge weight on my chest; I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t _think_.

“More than anything else, what I wanted to say was that I came into this room and read your books because it was a way to be surrounded by you when I wasn’t _allowed_ to be in your presence.”

“You’re allowed,” I whispered, suddenly desperate in my need to touch him, to pull him close to me and hold him, to verify the words I spoke with my body, my being, my _soul_. “Goddess, Link, _you’re allowed_.”

“I know,” he answered, slipping his arms around me to slide deeper into our embrace. “But you are too, you know.”

I pressed my face against his neck and just breathed him in, too overwhelmed to immediately process what he’d said. He was right – I was allowed to love him, now. I hadn’t been, before. We were so alike in so many ways, and yet a million miles between.

“I don’t know how,” I confessed into the hollow of his collarbone. “It was never supposed to be my choice; it was always my father’s decision. All I know is that I _want_ -“

“It’s alright,” he said, his face pressed into my hair. “But tonight, you have to sleep.”

I nodded; he was so rarely wrong, it wasn’t worth arguing. I didn’t let him move away, though; I pressed my face into his neck let the soft throb of his pulse lull me to sleep.


	10. Lay It On Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the leaders of Hyrule sit and chat, and The Issue is (finally) forced.
> 
> A friendly reminder that next chapter is Chapter Eleven, and I will seek to earn my 'Explicit' rating at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from the song by Vance Joy. 
> 
> *
> 
> So the last few months have been a hellscape for me. I've learned a lot, and most of them were shitty lessons.  
> Thank you, again, for the overflow of compassion and kindness you've shown me. This community have completely changed my opinion of the internet in general. You are beautiful people and I love you.  
> I am considering this a failed experiment: I am more comfortable, and more confident, in posting a story I've completed. Going forward, I will FINISH my fics before I post them so a series of delays like the ones I've experienced while writing this story won't happen. Being able to check in every few days, post a chapter, and get notes is actually a really beneficial system to have in place when everything else goes to shit, and I've sincerely missed the feedback I don't get when I don't post.  
> As you might have guessed from all that, I do have this finished, and I will post the final two chapters in the next week or so. Cheers. <3

The next morning dawned bright and beautiful, and I awoke alone.

How he managed to slide out of bed without waking me was completely beyond me.

I slipped out of my white dress – happy my courses were ended and there needn’t be a degree of anxiety attached to wearing white – and after a bit of deliberation, into another of the same style. I was trapped between Princess and Queen – being the only living royalty, but not yet married – but there was no argument about my being Hylia’s High Priestess. It seemed the most appropriate garb for the day, even without considering the comfort I had taken from it the night before.

Riju arrived just as we sat down to lunch, and she greeted me with every ounce of pomp she had promised upon our parting a mere week before.

She scarcely had been settled into her suite when we all met again in the throne room, to find five chairs arranged in a half-circle around Dorephan’s throne. Sidon was stationed by the door, to act as a runner and to intercept any other business that might come seeking his father’s attention.

Riju sat at Dorephan’s immediate left, with Bludo on the Zora’s right. Kaneli sat next to Riju, which left two chairs together, more or less across from the Zora King. As I sat in one, Sidon directed Link to the other.

 _Oh_.

There were some underlying assumptions here I hadn’t anticipated.

Neither, it seemed, had Link. He made no move to correct them, however, taking obvious pleasure in being invited to _sit_ for once. It seemed to be out of consideration for me that he took the seat nearer Bludo, as the Gorons are as boisterous a folk as they are physically expressive. Even as Link sat, Bludo swung one massive hand over to clap my Hero roughly on the shoulder, nearly tossing him out of his seat. Kaneli was a much more sedate neighbor.

“I shall start,” Dorephan announced, “by personally assuring each of you that the Hylian before us is the same Princess Zelda who befriended my beloved daughter Mipha one hundred years before, and that she has survived past her expected life span by the grace of Hylia, Herself. She has fought the Calamity this past century, and returned to us triumphant.”

“I can add my support to this assertion,” Riju chimed in as soon as the Zora King paused for breath. “She possesses key knowledge about Gerudo custom that only Hylian royalty would know. Furthermore, I would contend that the Champion, Link, has the full confidence of the Gerudo people, and his insistence that this woman is the rightful heir to Hyrule is more than enough for me.”

“The Gorons stand with Link,” Bludo agreed, seemingly distracted by the way the chair pressed into his back. Sidon was bringing in an oddly shaped chair with the assistance of a Goron trader, and we lapsed into silence while Bludo shifted into a different seat. Link was disguising his amusement of all these goings-on quite well, but he couldn’t hide it from _me_. There was a story here, for certain.

“I have been instructed by several of my people that if I do not support the claims of Link, I am not welcome home,” the wise old owl beside me chuckled. “He has done the Rito a great many services; I can not begrudge him my trust. I, too, support this claim.”

“Thank you, Kaneli,” I said, and he beamed at me. The Rito Elder was the sort I could not help but be fond of. Dorephan and Riju were already personal friends – my past and present, respectively – and Bludo was chortling along with Link just like Daruk once had. As the four of them looked to me with the simple nods acknowledging an unanimous vote of confidence, my first major worry fell away from my shoulders.

Between their support and the welcome I had received in Hateno, I could no longer doubt my ability to take the throne.

Now, I had to start building up the country around it.

“We have two major areas of concern,” I announced, and felt the balance of the room shift from Dorephan to me. It was heady, in a way I expected but was altogether unprepared for. Link seemed the most surprised, but perhaps that was just because I read him the easiest. “I cannot distinguish between importance, as they are equally critical in their own way. First, the short term goal of rebuilding and redirecting Hyrule into a safe and prosperous land.”

I waited for four nods – getting five, as Link seemed to catch on to the underlying etiquette of the summit – before I continued. “Second, the long term goal of preparing for the next cycle of Calamity, including the immediate concern of the four Divine Beasts.”

Dorephan lifted a fin slightly, and I nodded to him to cede the floor. “As you all know, the Divine Beast entrusted to the Zora Champion, my daughter Mipha, has gone silent.” I nodded, along with the rest, and sat back to allow each of them ample time to explain their own situations, knowing full well they would be fundamentally the same.

There was a serenity here, I was surprised to note. Much like the peace I had found the night before, in silent commune with Hyrule, the forms of regency were as familiar as my old boots had been. It was a shape and size I was used to, that fit me as well as I fit it. This, too, was something I was not only born for, but diligently sculpted into an ideal vessel for the purpose. The concerns of the previous days and weeks slid off my back as I found my shoulders squaring, my posture correcting, and my chin tilting as if I already wore the crown.

Link was watching avidly, and I couldn’t help but feel some small hope that he was intentionally studying our forms out of a desire to wield them himself. I saw his eyebrow twitch as both Riju and Kaneli sat forward; Kaneli tipped his head slightly to the Gerudo and sat back slightly as Riju lifted her finger slightly and was ceded the floor by Bludo. His brow furrowed into a slight frown that was quickly smoothed away as he tracked the tiny motions that dictated who spoke when.

Honestly, watching him learn was the best part of the morning.

We determined that, until more information was gleaned about the Divine Beasts, Towers, and Shrines – hopefully from a report from Purah, Robbie, or both – and a long term plan formed against the next incursion of Ganon, the Divine Beasts would remain the responsibility of the races already in possession of them. Before we could move past that, Link sat forward slightly and tipped a finger up. I couldn’t help but smile as I nodded to him to cede the floor.

“You each already have new Champions,” he said, with the air of a reminder. “It is a simple thing for the Princess, myself, or one of the Sheikah researchers to train them in the use of the Divine Beasts.”

Riju slumped back in her chair as Link nodded at her, giving her the floor without her having requested it. The rest of us turned and waited for her to speak.

“That would be me, for the Gerudo,” she explained with a sigh. “I am of a mind to decline the honor, but as you have already established that Buliara could assist in the day to day business, I cannot deny my own curiosity. I should have assumed that you received help from others as you did from me in your quest to subdue the four Divine Beasts.”

Bludo claimed the floor then, and I was regaled with stories of Yanubo and then Teba before Sidon stepped forward to graciously accept the honor of learning to pilot the Divine Beast. Dorephan seemed taken aback at the idea, until Link reminded the Zora King that the Calamity would not return in Sidon’s lifetime, and his son was safe from Mipha’s fate.

We needed a break, then. Emotions had run high, and covered the gamut from sorrow in loss to elation in victory. We took a meal and spoke of lighter matters, each of us leaving the room in turn for air and a chance to collect our thoughts. When I excused myself to take a circuit around the upper levels of the city, Link fell into step beside me.

“This is... nothing as I imagined,” he confided as we reached the top of a long ramp.

“No? What did you imagine?”

He shrugged. “You’re all very... dynamic personalities. And that in there is... politely subdued. I didn’t expect argument, but I also didn’t expect... _that_.”

“Traditionally, the discussions at such a summit are mere affirmations of the status quo. While this one is a decided break from the norm, at its core are five peoples with the same experiences, concerns, and goals. We all want a prosperous Hyrule, we all want a plan in place for the Divine Beasts and the return of the Cala-“

“The pig demon,” he interrupted, and I laughed,

“Yes. A plan against the return of the pig demon. No one is suggesting anything unorthodox; even your own point was clearly one everyone had already considered, if they weren’t yet willing to voice it.”

Link was nodding to himself as we walked, and we tacitly agreed to let our thoughts wander. I had not thought of the summit as an inroad to the conversation we needed to have about his own role, but it was proving to be just that. I still needed him to reach the conclusion on his own, but Goddess bless I could actually believe he might, given the way he was internalizing everything. By the time we’d circled the upper level and returned to the throne room and our chairs around Dorephan’s massive seat, I was nearing the point of actually hoping Link would bring up the need for a king on his own.

If only I could be so lucky!

“I believe we could start on your other main area of concern,” Dorephan suggested as we reconvened.

I nodded as he gestured for me to take the floor. “As we are waiting for input from the researchers among the Sheikah, and we have ten thousand years in which to plan, I agree that the immediate needs of Hyrule should take precedence.”

A quick look around gave me four nods, and a brief frown from Link before he, too, nodded.

“The infrastructure of Hyrule is in tatters, in every sense of the word,” I announced, to another round of nods, this time getting only a frown from Link. Did he disagree? I paused to indicate he could chime in, but he declined with an even briefer frown and headshake. I wasn’t going to delay the summit for the amount of time it would take Link to speak whatever it was that was whirling through his mind, so I had to opt to ignore whatever confusion or contention was concerning him. “Our physical infrastructure – bridges, roads, clean water, communication, trade – will be far more straight forward to correct if we first reinstate some degree of government. To that goal, I believe much of what once was can be streamlined or otherwise improved upon. However, there are some facets of Hyrule’s laws and traditions that are an inescapable necessity.”

It was quickly agreed that the system of ministers to advise the Queen be kept, if pared down somewhat. With a bit more discussion – again, only masking the fact that there really wasn’t any disagreement – the five Duchies were agreed to be the best way to manage the five provinces and reduce the strain on the crown.

It took a great deal longer to conclude that the four races would resume their individual treaties with Hyrule, in regards to defense of the land itself. Dorephan began with a very humble and tentative offer to once again police the waterways. It was all strictly formality; the Zora were the only reasonable option to maintain the rivers and lakes of Hyrule, just as the Rito could best protect her skies, the Gorons maintain Eldin, and the Gerudo safeguard the desert and its canyons. The highways and townships were under the jurisdiction of Hylian soldiers, and the monarchy protected by the Sheikah. Nothing else was a logical use of resources, but the offer was still worded in such a way as to encourage change if such was desired by any of the others present.

Dorephan’s offer was praised and accepted in turn by each of us, at which point he outlined the measures his people would take and where their jurisdiction would end. It was very long and tedious but this was the work that inspired peace.

When Dorephan was done, the entire painstaking process was repeated with Kaneli and Riju. Bludo, when ceded the floor, leaned back, crossed his arms, and grunted.

“Seeing as how any of the rest of you would burn up in Goron City, which is why we have this summit _here_ and not _there_ , how ‘bout we all agree that the Gorons will keep doing what they’re doing, and if you need us to do any more, you’ll say so? We’re still rebuilding from the mountain being reshaped by lava.”

Link snorted a barely-audible laugh, but in the sudden silence surrounding Bludo’s declaration, it was heard by all. Riju immediately started to giggle as she agreed to Bludo’s terms, and then we were all laughing and thanking Bludo for his candor.

“Wonderful,” Dorephan sighed, happily. “Our last order of business, it seems, is a discussion of the minstry and duchies. How do you intend to fill these positions?”

The first flutter of anxiety touched my stomach, but I suppressed the sensation as best as I was able. It was a legitimate question, and it could be handled delicately. It _could_. I wasn’t immediately sure _how_ but I was sure it _could_.

“Sir Link has made several suggestions for ministers that I have already begun to evaluate,” I answered, mentally wincing from the implications possible from that statement. “Bolson, of the construction company of the same name, seems to be a solid candidate for infrastructure, for example. I will consider anyone that is nominated by one of you, so if you have any ideas please feel free to forward them to me. I don’t believe that is a necessity for this summit, however; we can discuss it as it develops.”

They were nodding, thank the Goddess.

“The new duchies will be more difficult to fill, as whomever is chosen will found a new noble house; a poor decision at the onset could have ramifications for generations. My current conditions are rather too simplistic; they need to have _not_ fled Hyrule nor been born outside the country during the reign of the Calamity, as a stewardship of the land is the foremost qualification. Beyond that, I believe attributes of leadership and good husbandry are harder to articulate. It will take some time before I have the duchies filled.”

More nods. Goddess bless, I might have dodged a-

“But you cannot wait too long, surely, as the Minister of Defense is chosen from among the duchies, if I am not mistaken?” Riju inquired over tented fingers. I closed my eyes and focused on taking several long breaths, determined not to be angry with my new friend. She was young, and concerned about her own potential marriage and succession; of course she would think to inquire after mine.

“Minister of Defense?” Bludo asked. “I haven’t noticed that title in the Goron records.”

“It is a post that is always eclipsed by the other, grander title that is concurrently held,” Dorephan helpfully supplied. “The Minister of Defense is also the King of Hyrule, who is chosen from among the duchies.”

Silence reigned while I sat with my eyes closed and despaired. There had never been a good time to bring up my thoughts, and now there _never would be_.

“This is not how I wanted this to be discussed,” I began.

“It seems pretty critical,” Bludo argued, spluttering into silence as both Kaneli and Riju lifted up hands to forestall him.

“Let her state her piece,” Dorephan chided the Goron. “Go on, Princess, you have the floor.”

Courage, Zelda.

“The King of Hyrule, in the unfortunate state of the kingdom, must follow the traditional dictates of the position, moreso than any before him. His primary function is to protect the Queen, both present and future. The defense of the country is secondary to his guardianship of the line of Hylia. As in the case of my own parents, should something befall the Queen, the King of Hyrule would be obligated to protect the realm _and_ the Princess until such time as the Princess could marry and take over the throne. The line of Hylia must be maintained, for the sake of Hyrule’s future; as there is currently only one surviving member of that line, the production and protection of an heir are paramount.”

I stared at the space to the left of Dorephan’s head as I spoke, allowing myself to close my eyes briefly as I drew a breath and collected my thoughts before continuing. “Traditionally, the King of Hyrule choses his own successor, under the direction of the Queen and through her the guidance of the Goddess Hylia. Candidates are chosen from among the duchies, as these are the families most tied to Hyrule; stewards of the land whose connection to Hylia is second only to the ruling family itself. When more than one daughter is produced, she is encouraged to marry within the duchies, so that her future offspring can strengthen the crown in future generations. Once removed from the direct line of succession, most daughters of the crown are able to produce sons, verifying the hand of Hylia in the succession.”

The silence of the room when I stopped for air, to collect myself, was stifling. I could not look around; I did not trust my ability to continue speaking after seeing the expression I could only imagine was on Link’s face. Was he smug? Aghast? Stunned? Carefully neutral? I would be adrift, regardless.

“As it stands, with no duchies, no King, no sitting Queen, and no ministers, the task of selecting a King of Hyrule falls to myself; which is unprecedented in recorded history. However, I remain dedicated to selecting a King who will fulfill the obligations of the role in the event that my own fate mirrors my mother’s. As such, I believe a King can be selected separate from the duchies, and upon his own merit. He must have evidenced a strong connection with the land, preferably from acquiring and/or maintaining property; he must be known to much of the populace as a steward of the people; and he must be capable of mounting a defense of both Hyrule and its Queen, especially while the country works to rebuild.”

I paused longer this time, to give somebody – _anybody_ \- a chance to speak the obvious, so that I didn’t have to.

No one did.

Damn them.

“I believe it goes without saying that there is currently one Hylian living who fits that description. I do not believe you would have invited him into this summit without knowing everything I just said, Dorephan.”

The King of the Zora straightened, surprised, and it drew my eyes to his. He was _shocked_ at my conclusion; he truly had no idea that I didn’t want this spoken of. And why would he? Clearly, he and the others had assumed that Link was a foregone conclusion, and _surely_ the conversation had come up in the weeks we had been together after the Calamity.

Hadn’t I assumed the same, when I was still imprisoned? That we would have a happy homecoming, that he would declare that he remembered me and everything would be precisely as it had always been? He would sweep me off my feet, perhaps; kiss me on the Field and swear his undying love and devotion? I would propose right then and there and we would live happily ever after?

I had dreamed it, to be sure. But life was not a fairy story, and we had both suffered too much to ever pretend nothing had changed.

“You mean Link, right?” Bludo broke the silence.

It was all I could do not to hang my head.

“Yes,” Riju answered for me. “Link is the highest ranking Hylian male alive, owns land in multiple provinces, and already saved the realm once. He’s the only option for King. That’s why he’s sitting _right there_.”

The silence became oppressive as they each turned to look at the Hylian in question. I fought the impulse, but eventually my eyes were drawn, inexorably to his.

He was staring at me, without a drop of emotion on his face. He was blank; utterly unreadable.

Our eyes met. He blinked once, and then stood. He held my gaze for a moment longer, and then turned on his heel and strode out of the room.

I steeled my shoulders against the devastating surge of disappointment. _That answers that, then_. 

“He didn’t know?” Kaneli whispered, stunned.

“Father!” Sidon’s voice echoed in the chamber, outraged. “How could you?”

“How could I-“

“One hundred years apart, and you ruined her proposal! They’re _Hylian_ , Father, they only marry once! It was Princess Zelda’s opportunity to marry for love and you squandered it! How _could you_?”

“You never mentioned it to him?” Riju asked, leaning forward to pitch her question to me as Dorephan spluttered protests against his son, who had launched into a long – and loud – defense of love.

“No!” I hissed in reply. “He didn’t get his memories back until the day he destroyed the Calamity, he’s been piecing back together his life!”

“But, surely before?” she countered, clearly astonished by the revelation.

“When my father yet lived and all the duchies were intact? We could not have been together, before the Calamity, and _we were not_.”

Riju covered her mouth with both hands, dismayed, as Kaneli leaned over to rest a feathered arm on my shoulders. I expected him to speak, but he offered nothing but silent comfort as we listed to Sidon rage.

“But... he clearly loves you,” Riju managed between parted fingers. “I would have-“

“You don’t understand,” I interrupted, into a sudden silence as Sidon paused for breath. He turned to listen to what I was saying to Riju. “It is not the idea of... _him and I_ that I must ease him into. It is rather that I don’t think he wants the _crown_. I have asked him, repeatedly, what role he saw in the future of Hyrule, and he has never voiced an opinion. He has already given _literally everything_ to Hyrule, including his _life_. If he wants a quiet retirement in the mountains, I owe him that. _We_ owe him that.”

I paused a moment, but it seemed I had rendered them speechless. “I was raised believing my parents would select for me the man who would be king, and that I would have little say in the matter. They would not choose for me someone I found abhorrent, but ultimately my choices would be limited. The choice I am left with is... not unpleasant for me, as you all seem to already know. But Link was not raised with the constraints I was. He has long believed that he has a specific task to fulfill – to master the sword that seals the darkness and assist me in defeating the Calamity Ganon – and then he will simply _fade_. Either from the public eye or from existence, I am not sure, but he told me long ago that there was no future for him after he had fulfilled the sword’s purpose. If I command him to take up the crown, I do not doubt he will; but after everything he has done, everything he has _lost_ , he deserves better than for his fate to be decided for him. This once, just this once, Link should get to choose. Even if it is not what I want, or what this council wants, or even what is best for Hyrule.”

I stood as they all nodded, and took a quick survey of their expressions. Riju was nodding a bit grimly, as if resigned to the idea that we owed Link _freedom_ moreso than a crown. Bludo was vaguely confused, although about what was anyone’s guess. Kaneli was nodding slowly, lost in thought. Dorephan, though, smiled warmly at me.

“You should go and clear this up, then,” he said, gesturing broadly to the door Link had exited through. “Learn for us what the Hero of Hyrule truly desires for his future, and report back with an updated course of action. I have no doubt in my mind, however, that the only apology owed will be that of this council and the spoiling of an intended proposal. A crown is a light burden indeed when it is the price of love.”

I had too many comments warring within to choose one to voice, so instead I merely nodded, and excused myself from the summit.

I did not have to ask where Link went. There was only one place he would go; he would want to be alone, but he also would never risk my safety, regardless of... whatever it was he was feeling. Was he truly just disappointed that we had been speculatively betrothed by the Council of Five? Or was he upset at his sudden loss of freedom? Or something else entirely?

I didn’t know, and that was the entire problem in a nutshell. _He wouldn’t tell me what he wanted_.

I paused at the door to the royal suite and laid my forehead against the heavy wooden panel. There was no light on within, but there wouldn’t be. A glance in either direction told me the open air hallway was empty; we could yell at each other without witnesses if need be.

I drew a deep breath, and I pushed open the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another note: I made an attempt to catch up on the 150+ notes I had sitting in my inbox from the last two months but I just couldn't. Rather than beat myself up over it, I decided to just say it here:  
> Thank you.  
> Thank you for every last comment, each and every one was a bright spot in a bad day (there have been a lot of bad days) and the fact that SO MANY of you took the time to tell me you liked my writing is SUCH a gift. This pack of strangers on the internet has legitimately saved my sanity, gave me a reason to get out of bed and get my shit together - because if I didn't get my stuff done then I wouldn't be able to write and if I didn't write I couldn't post and if I didn't post you couldn't comment.  
> If you left me a comment that I didn't reply to, I'm very sorry to leave you hanging, but I swear I read them all. <3


	11. Dive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW  
> *  
> Herein I aspire to earn my E rating. Contains awkwardness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from the song by Ed Sheeran
> 
> This ended up being incredibly difficult to write, since 'first time' from a first person POV is a giant PITA. Also, it's hard to get into a fluffy mindset when you're wading through muck on a personal level.  
> That said, another enormous thanks for all the beautiful people who have appeared through the magic of the internet to remind me of the inherent goodness of mankind. The lot of you have saved my sanity.

The room was dark, shuttered, but I knew he was within. I couldn’t hear him, but I would have wagered my good name that he was standing in the far corner, to my left, and that he had no problem seeing me. As the door shut behind me and I was rendered blind in the lightless room, I remained confident he knew exactly where I stood.

“I’m sorry,” I said into the darkness.

“You should have told me,” he replied, immediately. Normally he weighed his words; there was always a gap between question and answer, but perhaps he already knew everything he needed to say. Perhaps that _was_ everything he needed to say.

“I couldn’t,” I told him, and then heard a huff from the corner where I knew he stood. Impatience, perhaps, or maybe disbelief? I gave him a moment to cycle through whatever emotion had caused the display before continuing. “I did not allow myself to dwell on it, in the one hundred years of my imprisonment, but I would be lying to say the thought did not cross my mind. When I first saw you, when we’d beaten the Cala- the pig demon, and finally stood face to face on the Field? I allowed my own wants and needs to overrule my good sense, and I asked if you remembered me rather than inquire over your own health or well being. I was wrong, in that, and I had no desire to make the same mistake again. There was no reason to-“

“No reason?” he interrupted, with heat in his voice. “There was _no reason_ to tell me that I- that _we_ – that... that... _this_?”

“Not until I knew what you wanted, no. I’ve tried to determine what you wanted, so I knew-“

“What I wanted? We went over this in Gerudo Town!”

“No, we did _not_. We-“

“You still doubt me? After everything? What do I have to do to prove this to you?“

He was moving across the room. I couldn’t hear his steps or see him – I couldn’t see anything, really, except the outline of the door and the shutters on the window – but the source of his voice was shifting. He was in between the chairs, now, halfway across the room. Coming towards me.

“If I told you, right now, that for the good of Hyrule, I needed you to marry Riju and move to the oasis outside Gerudo Town, would you? If it was a direct order?”

Silence. When he finally answered, he had moved no closer; I imagined the question had stopped him in his tracks. “If you ordered me, I would.”

“Even though it wasn’t what you wanted, wasn’t what _I_ wanted, you would still do it?”

He didn’t answer, but I didn’t need him to. I didn’t wait around to see if he would. “If I had asked you to marry me, you would have said yes. I never would have known if it was what you wanted.”

“How,” he asked, haltingly, each word seeming to pain him, “can you possibly wonder if marrying you is what I wanted? How can you think marrying  _you_ and marrying  _Riju_ is the same? How can you still _doubt_ me?”

“It isn’t... _me_... that I think you don’t want,” I confessed. “But rather the crown.”

“What?”

“I asked you what role you saw yourself in, and you said _whatever role I gave you_. You’ve never given me any indication, before today, that you had even the slightest interest in governance, in learning what it would take to lead Hyrule. For as far as I know, you would rather retire to Hateno and be-“

“Of _course_ would rather retire to Hateno than deal with the new government,” he interrupted, moving forward again. “And yes, that was what I had been planning on, but only because I had _no idea_ there was any other option, because you _never let on_ that there might be!”

“Kissing you and telling you I loved you and asking you what you wanted, what role you saw yourself in, _none of that_ gave you any indication? I told you that you were allowed to love me, what else did you need?”

“I didn’t read anything into your actions. When you love a Princess, you stop thinking about the future!” he half-shouted, now only steps away.

“Well, maybe you should _start_!” I shouted back, surprising us both.

I could hear him breathing, now, harsh enough to be discernible over my own rasping breath. We stood there, face-to-face in the darkness, painfully aware of one another even if I couldn’t see anything past my nose. I fought for my composure, found it, and then started the search for something to say as the silence dragged on.

“You’re a good soldier, you’ve _always_ been a good soldier. Even when you knew I shouldn’t be alone; when I ordered you away, you left. You followed my decree to the letter of the law, if not the spirit. And if I had asked, if I had proposed and you had said yes, I would have spent the rest of my life wondering whether you had actually wanted it...”

It had to be said. I loathed to say her name – here! now! – but Goddess forgive me, it _had to_ be said.

“...or if I was no different than Mipha, misunderstanding your affection and saddling you with the responsibility of kingship. You didn’t want to be king of the Zora, and I strongly doubt you want to be king of Hyrule. You claim the sword has directed you into obscurity, but I know you, Link. You desire it for yourself. You have earned your rest, and if you would rather-“

“Rather what?” his voice rasped, and he shifted slightly, just enough to obscure part of the light leaking around the shutters and confirming how close to me he stood. “Rather stand aside and watch you marry another? Put my back to the door of the royal chamber and listen to you lie with someone you cannot possibly love? Live through the only nightmare you cannot wake me from?”

 _Oh_. Oh, why hadn’t I thought of it in that light? I hadn’t begun considering who I might marry should Link decline the crown; it was too many steps removed from the problem at hand to have been even acknowledged yet. Had he already begun dreading my marriage to another before the Calamity? Had this been haunting his thoughts when it had not even occurred to me?

I stepped to the side, away from the door, and pressed my back to the cold stone of the wall. From here I could make out his outline better, and without the light leaking through the door at my back, my eyes adjusted slightly to the darkness in the room. I could almost believe I could see his face, when really it was just his outline against the shuttered window.

“...no,” I said at length. “I thought you might rather take the peace you have earned, that you have worked for your whole life, than to take on another burden.”

“Another- what?”

“One more burden, one more responsibility, one more thing the world looks to you for. The reason you didn’t speak for months when first I met you, the reason your friendship with Mipha was strained.”

“And that’s how you think this should be weighed? To discard the sword in the name of a quiet life in Hateno, or to suffer under the weight of the crown?”

 _Yes_ , I wanted to say, but it was a lie. It was the only way I was willing to weigh it, the only method I had confidence in – but it was not what I wanted. Not what I hoped. So instead I did not answer.

My silence was as damning as his.

“The choice has nothing to do with being king and everything to do with _you_. If being king is the price to stand at your side, to avoid the _torment_ that would be your wedding to another, it is a gilded cage I will _gladly_ suffer.”

My heart surged into my throat. “I did not think-“

The darkness that was his shape was moving, sliding closer silently but for the heated voice. “How could you possibly think I don’t want you? I died for you. I _lived_ for you. I have told you every day since I met you that _my life is yours_. What have I done that makes you still doubt _this_ , after all this time?”

He was directly in front of me now, looming in the darkness. I could see the whites of his eyes, glowing faintly from what felt like only inches away. I reached down with both hands and clutched the wall to steady myself as my insides twisted into knots. I opened my mouth to speak, but he interrupted.

“Do not say Mipha.”

I pointedly shut my mouth and he swore under his breath in Gerudo.

“She is _dead_ , Zelda, but even beyond that, I-“

“I do not think you hold a torch for her,” I confessed, and he went immediately still. “I instead doubt myself. I doubt I have read you aright. I worry that I have misconstrued your affection as she did, and that you would take my proposal as an order.”

He was pressed up against me, then, trapping me between him and the wall, and my heart rattled against its bone cage as the blood rushed past my ears and all I could feel was _him_. The sudden warmth of him pressed against me, the passion in his voice.

“I would never follow an order as gladly as that one.”

“I don’t want it to be an order!” His hands were at my waist, and I released the wall to clutch his wrists and hold him against me, hold him near. “I want you want _me_ , I don’t want to live my life wondering whether you were simply too considerate to tell me I had read you wrong!”

I ran my hands up his arms as he leaned forward, pressing his forehead against mine. I could see him, now, see his face, see the black circles of his pupils within the dim gleam of his eyes. He was shaking as badly as I was; the tremble in his voice made an ache bloom in my abdomen.

“I have been devoted to you since the moment our eyes first met, when I knelt at your father’s feet. I have loved you since the morning you woke up and buried your face in my clothes and somehow imagined I didn’t see the way you breathed me in. And I have _wanted_ you since the night we spent over the Inogo Bridge, when you knelt in prayer on the balcony and glowed in the light of the rising moon.”

“I’m yours, you _fool_ ,” I hissed at him. “I’ve been waiting for you decide you were willing to accept everything that comes along with me.”

“Tell me,” he whispered. “If everything I have is yours, what price is left for me to pay?”

“You have to be my father’s successor,” I replied, and he coughed a ghost of a laugh. “You have to stay in the public eye. You’ve died for Hyrule, but now you would have to _live_ for Hyrule. You would learn kingship in case I fell, so that you could protect Hyrule until my daughter was fit to rule, as my father did for my mother and I.”

“Our daughter,” he corrected, and I lost my voice. I nodded dumbly, my forehead shifting against his.

“I would have to do all of that anyways, don’t you see? You’re already using me to select ministers, and you cannot think I would ever stop protecting you. Just being with you will teach me kingship, whether I want it or not. The difference is you’re making it official, giving me the title, and making it so the children I’m protecting are _mine_. _Ours_. How could you possibly think I wouldn’t _want that_ if it was even the most remote of possibilities?”

“I never want to presume to know what you want,” I answered, as soon as I was able to swallow back the lump in my throat. “I wanted you to make it clear, so that I didn’t spend the rest of my life wondering if I was making the same mistake as-“

“No more,” he interrupted, and I nodded again. “I love you. I want you. I would pay any price to have you. If the cost of your love is a crown, I’ll wear it happily. It is the best order I could ever follow, and if it’s not an order then I will gladly volunteer.”

“There is no one else,” I countered. “Even if I didn’t love you, didn’t _want_ you, there is no other option. I haven’t considered any other option. I was only waiting for you to be ready to entertain the idea.”

“Oh, I am definitely entertaining the idea,” he chuckled, and then tipped his head to the side and kissed me.

I reached up with both hands and threaded my fingers through his hair and held him to me, desperate for this contact, this _relief_ , as everything in my world was suddenly perfect. He wanted me – he wanted me! – and I didn’t have anything left to fear. His hands slipped from my waist to my hips and he lifted me free of my feet and pressed me against the wall, running his palms quickly back up my sides to rest on my heaving ribs, so close to my breasts as to make thought very nearly impossible.

I tightened my hands in his hair and pressed his mouth to mine as my legs twined around his waist. A hundred years vanished and I was falling again, the long line of his body pressed to mine as I wrapped around him and plummeted down the cliffs from Kakariko. His feet were anchored to the floor, pressing me to the wall, but the sensation was exactly the same. I was dizzy and weightless and untethered from the earth and I had never been more sure that I was precisely where I needed to be.

His hands slid across my breasts as I desperately held his lips to mine. I arched with a gasp that made him grin against my mouth and press me harder against the wall as his hands traced the curve of my waist to cup my ass so he could _grind_ into my hips.

The sudden, intense pressure was so good I saw stars and inadvertently threw my head back to bounce against the stone wall. Link eased back and set me down; I had to quickly release my grip on his waist so I could stand, as he resisted my tug on his hair to try to keep him in place.

“Are you alright?”

“Are you kidding?”

He chuckled and carefully freed himself from my hands. He was assisted by the dizziness causing me to catch at the wall to hold myself upright. “Why- Where are you going?”

“Just far enough away to keep myself out of trouble. I assume you came up here to take me back to the summit.”

“No,” I said. I took the opportunity to cross the room to the windows and tug the shutters open. “They’re definitely done for the day, and even if they weren’t, I wouldn’t want to go back. Not now.”

He didn’t answer; I assumed he was merely watching me as I swung the heavy wooden panels aside to reveal the last rays of the setting sun. I didn’t draw the sheer curtains that twisted gently in the light breeze off the water of Zora’s Domain, letting them instead filter the thin light into a steady glow as I turned back to face Link.

He was a glorious mess. His hair was mussed, his lips slightly reddened, and he stood with one hand pressed heavily to the wall, as if unsure that his legs would hold his full weight. I liked knowing I’d pulled him off balance, but I decided immediately that I preferred his confidence to his caution. I folded my arms carefully behind my back, demure, as he had seen me stand countless times before; perhaps he didn’t realize I did it to untie the lacing on my dress.

“What do you mean, far enough away to keep out of trouble?”

He took a long breath and smiled wryly before gesturing to me. “You just asked me to father your children, Zelda, and I’m not known for an abundance of caution. Some temptations are too much for even me.”

“Why is this a temptation you have to resist?”

He froze, and _oh_ I had never felt more powerful than in that moment. I had been the avatar of a goddess for a century but that was nothing compared to the way it felt to inspire the naked desire suddenly painted across Link’s face, blatant enough for even my inexperience to read.

“Purah gave me a full physical, and I don’t hide my courses from you; not that it would do me any good to try. I’m healthy, and physically recovered from my stasis. Everyone we’ve met seems to believe we were... _intimate_ before the Calamity, and even more so now, so there’s no public opinion to be lost. Bludo just said there wasn’t anyone else they would even _consider_ to be king except you, and there’s nobody else to tell us no. We make the rules now, Link.” I pulled free the knot holding my dress in place with trembling hands and felt it slither down my skin to puddle in the twilight at my feet. Link’s eyes followed it down and then snapped back up to meet mine; he seemed locked in place, the hand on the wall now gripping the stone hard enough to turn his knuckles white. “I scarcely dared to dream of this, but I will not deny I want it. I have waited for you for over a hundred years, and I will wait longer if you need me to. I would wait millennia for you, I’ve said it before. This is as clear as I can make it; if you want me, come and claim me.”

For ten seconds, there was no sound. No movement. Nothing to break the stillness. He sucked in one serrated breath and then I quit counting how much time passed. I clenched my fists and I held myself still and I flatly refused to consider the possibility that he would walk away. He wanted this – _we_ wanted this – it was allowed, it was allowed, it was allowed! Oh, I should have said that, that meant more to him than-

He swayed on his feet, so minutely that I almost missed it. He leaned forward, eyes never breaking mine, and the lean because a step and then he was walking towards me and _oh_ thank the Goddess we could finally be _us_ and I could finally figure out what this even _meant_ and-

“There’s no going back from this,” he said, still several steps away.

“I know what it means to lose one’s virginity,” I countered, and he stopped mid-step for a moment before continuing toward me, slower than before.

“I didn’t mean that, but yes. I meant I still have the Sword. Future generations of us will know this is a possibility. Ten thousand years from now, someone like me might be devastated because they think someone like you might love them. This doesn’t just change _us_ , it potentially changes _them_.”

“Do you think the sword won’t know to keep this secret?”

The blade flashed, and while I heard no words I _felt_ the agreement, the _promise_. Link’s eyes went wide and he faltered another step, this time bringing his heels together to stand still some three paces away from me. He grasped the buckle that held the Master Sword to his shoulder and released it, the legendary weapon clattering to the floor.

He still hadn’t looked anywhere but my eyes.

He stood just three impossible paces away, at the very edge of the moonlight.

“I don’t know... what _this_ is,” I told him, mentally lifting my chin as I made the confession. “I don’t know what to do, what I _want_. But... you do.”

He hesitated before slowly nodding.

“Teach me?”

He slowly – he had never moved this slowly in his entire life, the _bastard_ – reached up over his shoulder to grasp the back of his Champion’s tunic and pull it off over his head, breaking eye contact with me for the first time since my dress had hit the floor. I drew in a shaking breath and fought to hold still.

He tossed the tunic to the side aimlessly and then took another step toward me, breaking the plane of the light on the floor so his shadow mingled with mine. It became noticeably harder to breathe.

“You don’t deserve this.”

“What don’t I deserve?”

“A sitting room floor at the end of an argument. You deserve champagne, flower petals in your sheets, music playing from somewhere below the window, candle light, planning.”

“A campfire in the ruins of a temple,” I countered. “A bed made of your clothes. The leeward side of a hill, under a tree, in a sudden downpour. _That’s_ us. This is as close as we’ll get to that balcony in that inn on the way to the Spring of Power, and _that’s_ what I want.”

He reached out with both hands, and the heat of his skin against mine was electric, sending a current to the base of my spine. His palms were rough against the thin skin covering my ribs, his calloused fingers gentle but firm as they slowly traced their way to my shoulder blades and down. I threaded my hands into his hair and tugged his face to within an inch of mine.

“Do you know what I want?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Is it what you want?”

“Yes,” he said again, and with both hands suddenly on my hips, pulled me tightly against him as our lips met and I was falling all over again. Every other kiss before now had been playful, I realized – teasing, even. That was lost here – there was heat, and joy, and serious intent, but not a drop of teasing. Neither one of us was going to walk away.

The buttons of his shirt were warm against my skin, and his left hand was sprawled across the small of my back, holding me to him. His right hand was inexplicably missing, and as I felt my way down to his shoulder with one hand, the other slid down to cup the base of his head and hold his mouth to mine. His tongue traced my teeth and for a second I forgot I was looking for his other hand.

The angle of his shoulder was tipped back, and I realized he was digging in his pack. His arm suddenly surged forward, and something cold and soft brushed against my side. I pulled away just enough to glance back – he’d produced a blanket from his impossible pack and snapped his wrist to unfurl it onto the patch of moonlight at my back. Then that missing hand was back on my skin, his callouses raising goosebumps down my arms as he ran his hands down to the backs of my thighs and _lifted._ I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and twined my legs around his waist – feeling another shock down my spine as his hips were suddenly pressed against mine – and then I was falling again. He leaned down with me in his arms and slowly laid me on my back on the blanket. The material warmed quickly beneath me and I turned my attention to the buttons on Link’s linen shirt.

He was pulling off belts – nearly throwing the Sheikah slate across the room – and tossing his pack in vaguely the same direction as his tunic. He knelt over me and I thought he was going to kiss me again, and instead his lips began to trace the line of my neck, across my collarbone, and down my sternum.

I didn’t know where to put my hands. I threaded them through his hair but it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t reach the buttons of his shirt well enough to pop them open – he was making quick work of them, no worries there – but I was going to explode out of my skin if I didn’t _do something_.

“I don’t...”  I said, gasping a little as his lips paused in their ministrations and his breath raised the dampened skin into another wave of goose bumps. “...know what... I should be doing.”

“Feel,” he answered, and I let my eyes flutter closed. “Learn yourself. Tell me what you like.”

That was... not very different than the advice Purah had given me. I immediately decided not to think about Purah again. Maybe ever.

A thump somewhere to my left was followed by one to my right and I realized he’d kicked off his boots. His hands were on me, then, cupping and tracing and _cataloging_ and I tried to do what he’d said – just _feel_.

I could feel the different callouses on his fingers from the draw of his bow. There was a scar across his left palm that caught and dragged just enough to be continuously distracting. He was warm and there was nothing soft about him; everything was hard lines and solid muscle. His shirt hung open and I reached up with both hands, free for the first time to touch the overlapping ridges of scars that seemed to be only skin deep; the musculature underneath bunched and shifted as if unconnected to the skin above. I laid my palms on his chest and ran my hands down his abdomen to the waist of his pants, tucking my fingers underneath and tracing around to his back.

He gasped against my chest and my heart gave a little lurch – he’d liked that. I could make him feel, make him _react._ It was a sensation of power that immediately went to my head; I felt drunk with it.

He returned the favor by tracing a nipple with his tongue and I clung to the waist band of his pants as I arched off the floor. I could _feel_ him smile against me, and after a moment he repeated the motion with his whole mouth.

How-? How could anything so simple feel so... so... _this_?

Everything his mouth did, his thumb replicated on the other side, and the _contrast_ was unfathomable. Hot and warm, wet and dry, soft and rough – as soon as I started to get used to the sensation, he traded sides, and I arched off the floor again.

I lost my grip on his pants as he began to work his way down my body, lips and hands and tongue and callous and hints of dragged fingernail, and _feel_ was all I could manage. I tipped my head back and left my eyes closed and worked my hands through his hair, holding him briefly still whenever he did something particularly pleasant.

I liked his hands at the tops of my thighs. I liked his mouth on the skin below my navel. I liked the little nips of his teeth against my hips, my ribs, my collarbone.

He pulled out of my grasp, gone too far for me to comfortably reach his hair, and I let my hands fall to either side of my head, palms up. I felt exposed, _open_ , in a way I never had before. The moonlight yet streamed in from the window, making the top of Link’s head glow as he began kissing the crease of my thigh.

I had to work to breathe as he gently lifted my leg and draped it over his shoulder, kissing his way down from my knee until I couldn’t see his face. I wanted to – Goddess, how I wanted to, but I tipped my head back and tried to just feel – just _feel_ – and then he kissed-

-he kissed my-

 _Oh_ I didn’t have adequate language for this; everything I knew was so  _clinical_.   _Da_ _mn him_ for not teaching me all the filthy words I knew he had in his lexicon, _damn_ the librarians for keeping me out of the erotica, _damn the world_ for never letting me know I was missing out on _this_.

He brought one hand up, to gently spread me wider, give his mouth room to work, and then he was exploring me with his tongue. I clutched the blanket, desperate not to move, not to pull myself away from _whatever the fuck_ _he was doing with his brilliant, beautiful, filthy tongue_. He laid flat on his stomach and the angle changed and I couldn’t help it, I arched; I clung to the blanket and let out a sound that was suspiciously close to a whimper and _oh_ if it didn’t make him redouble his efforts.

I was fighting a losing battle against my body, which seemed determined to become a writhing mass; I had to stay _still_ , I had to not move away from this amazing man and that amazing mouth and- and-

His nose, it had to be his nose, it was pressed against _that spot_ , that bundle of nerves, and then he shifted again and traced it with his tongue and the room was getting brighter, it had to be, it _had to be_ , and then there was pressure, glorious amazing pressure, and I could feel his arm shifting under my thigh and he began to slide one finger into me-

-and the feeling of pressure changed. It wasn’t purely good – stretching what had never been stretched before, pressing against tissues that had never been touched – but before I had a chance to feel discomfort he stopped. Waited. Worked me into a frenzy with his tongue until I found his elbow with my heel and encouraged him to move again.

I had the top of the blanket pulled over my face and I was whispering _something_ , some mindless babble that was more a repetition of _Link_ and _please_ and _yes_ and then his finger moved and I was incapable of speech because I was incapable of _breath_. He was tapping, tapping the tip of his finger deep inside of me, and every tap sent electricity up my spine and made the muscles of my thighs shake and my abdomen clench and then he shifted his mouth again and _sucked_ and the world went white.

The Golden power was nothing to this, the waves rippling through me until they erupted from my throat into an echoing moan. My back arched straight off the floor as I lost the battle to stay still and surged out of Link’s hands. He caught me, both hands on my hips, and was gently kissing my thighs as the stars faded from behind my eyelids and I started to be able to breathe again.

No sooner had I caught my breath and considered opening my eyes to look down at him, he kissed his way back down, lifting my thigh back onto his shoulder as he parted me again with his tongue and Goddess bless, the idea that I would feel it all _again_ was enough to make me lose my mind.

“But... I... you... _Link_.”

“I know,” he whispered between kisses. “But the more I do _this_ ,” he said, and then _licked me_ , the filthy brazen beautiful man, “the less I might hurt you.”

There was no arguing with him, really. Not that I wanted to. Goddess knew only one of us had any idea what they were doing, and he was a master of his craft, for as far as I was concerned.

“And besides,” he whispered, and then _licked me again_ , “you are the greatest thing I have ever tasted.”

He redoubled his efforts and I let my eyes roll back in my head, gripped the blanket with both hands, and utterly abandoned any hope of staying still or quiet. Anyone who came anywhere near this room would know I was climaxing – over and over again – and they would know _damn sure_ that Link was the reason why.

As I eased back to the floor, _again_ , after arching out of his hands, _again_ , bless him, I felt him move away from me. I caught my breath and looked up to find him watching me. This time he was standing, a few feet away, pulling something out of his pack. He dropped the pack to the floor and then, with a self-consciousness I wasn’t used to seeing from him, stepped out of his pants and under shorts.

It was everything I could do not to immediately start asking questions; I was too much a researcher for my own good. I’d never seen a male naked before, but surely, were the roles reversed, I wouldn’t want an inquisition? Instead, I focused on what looked to be a bottle in his hand. “What’s that?”

“Oil,” he responded, with a shrug, and then dropped to the floor beside me. I rolled to face him, with some difficulty; there was a liquidity to my limbs I was altogether unfamiliar with and immediately fond of. Purah had mentioned lubricant and –

No. No, I wasn’t thinking of Purah. Ugh.

“May I?”

His eyebrows lifted, but the surprise immediately shifted into a smile. He held out the bottle, and I in turn held out my hand, palm-up. He unstoppered the bottle and tapped out a number of drops into my hand. I dabbed my finger in the oil for a moment, pondering its source, and then carefully reached down to grab his-

“I don’t have any of the right words for this,” I told him, as I held his eyes and slowly began to spread the oil. “Everything I might think is so _clinical_.”

His eyes fluttered closed as I experimented with grip and movement, but he breathed a laugh at my words. “I’m already deflowering the princess of Hyrule on a sitting room floor,” he whispered, his voice catching as I tightened my grip a bit. “You want me to talk dirty to her, as well?”

“Yes.”

His hips lifted slightly from the floor and _goddess_ I thought I was powerful before. He tucked an arm under me as I worked the oil across his skin and leaned down to take my breast into his mouth. I subconsciously arched, releasing my grip on him as I tumbled onto my back. He followed, rolling to come up on his hands and knees above me, lips never leaving my nipple.

“Next time,” he whispered again. “Goddesses save me, if you give me a _next time_ I will teach you any word you want, in any language I know.”

“Let's worry about  _this time_ , before I make any promises,” I countered.

He lifted his head so our eyes were even and then shifted so his knees were between mine; my knees lifted of their own volition and suddenly I was nervous again.

“Tell me if I hurt you,” he pleaded. I could do nothing but nod at the worry painted across his features.

I expected it to hurt. I had been warned time and again- _for fucks sake stop thinking about Purah_. But this? This was nothing I expected. The pain never came, just an odd sort of stretching, a pressure I was completely at odds to describe. I couldn’t exactly call it pleasant, but that was a far cry from pain.

“Zelda? Are you-“

“Don’t you _dare_ stop,” I ordered, and he breathed out a laugh – but he did as he was told, bless him.

 _Bless him_.

Then his hips were flush with mine and his chest was pressed against mine and his lips were tracing endless lines up my throat and I was so full of him I couldn’t _breathe_ and I gripped his shoulder blades and tried to just feel but there was too much – altogether too much – and instead I managed to ask, “okay, now what?”

To answer, he shifted; minutely, forward, to let his pelvic bone press into me but _Great Golden Goddesses_ I suddenly understood everything I’d been missing.

“Do that again,” I gasped, and he laughed, and then I lost the ability to speak.

There were no words – _none_ – in my lexicon to describe how Link made me feel. The stone beneath me, the rumpled blankets around us, his heartbeat against my sternum, his lips’ seeming dedication to mapping every inch of my skin, his hands roaming from breast to knees and back again, my ankles locked at the small of his back and through it all the only word my throat knew was his name. He was murmuring against my skin, his words lost to my ears beneath my own voice, but the louder I got the more frantic he became. He moved faster, hands clutching my hips, face buried in my neck as he suddenly went silent, his desperate breaths only making me louder.

HIs hands suddenly came up to my face, cupping my cheeks, and my eyes flew open to meet his.

He whispered my name, twice, and then went still, his hips stuttering to a stop as his eyes fluttered closed and the _utter devotion_ on his face unmade me. My world was consumed by electricity and white light and _him_ , his skin and his heartbeat and his breath and his voice, broken and gasping, telling me over and over again, “I love you.”

We tumbled apart as I fought for breath. Link wasn’t _winded_ per se, but he seemed shaken, flustered and vaguely disbelieving in a way that was impossibly endearing. I rolled towards him, and he immediately gathered me into his arms, wrapping the blanket around us and carefully arranging limbs and hair and hands and skin, so much glorious skin.

 

~~~

 

 

“There will definitely be a next time,” I promised, still a bit breathlessly, into the curve of his neck. His arms tightened around me, and he laughed. Goddess, how I would never grow tired of the sound.

“I swear, I will teach you any words you want,” he replied.

All I could do was laugh. I didn't have the breath to  _think_ , much less speak. I rested my face against the skin of his shoulder and let my world view settle into its new configuration. It seemed almost impossible, but from where I lay, in a growing square of moonlight, we had cobbled together the best possible outcome from the end of the world. The more I thought, the more gratitude bubbled up in my chest.

"You've given me everything," I whispered. "Everything I could want, everything I could need. All I want is to return the favor." 

I felt his chuckle a moment before it reached my ears, and that, too, was something that I could only be grateful for.

"I get a boon from my Princess? You'll grant me my dearest wish?"

I nodded, pulling slightly back to meet his eyes. “Anything that is in mine to give.”

He carded both hands through my hair and tipped my mouth up to meet his.

“Marry me.”


	12. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is as close as I can get to barfing rainbows. Vaguely NSFW, in a strictly suggestive sense.
> 
> Also I really want this Gerudo poetry to be a thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I bundled my mother into a car on Friday morning and drove 8 hours to a tiny town the next state over so she could meet her newfound sister (given up for adoption by my grandmother before my mother was born) for the first time. My newfound cousin and I spent the weekend pointing out similarities and laughing at our moms and I am just so full of love now. 
> 
> And then I came home and went through comments you've all left me and now I get to check complete on this work - and, for the time being, this series - and all I can say is thank you. This community has proven again to be the absolute best place on the internet. I love all the people I've met here - you're supportive and empathetic and so unbelievably kind. Writing this series really helped me deal with some dark spots in my personal history and the reception I've received has, simply put, changed my life. To everyone who kudo'd or commented or reblogged or even just helped drive up the hit count, thank you, from the very bottom of my heart.

I learned so much in the following weeks.

Some of the things were simple. I learned that I absolutely loved to sleep in the nude, and did so at every opportunity, which was not as frequent as I might have liked. I learned that Link was far more likely to need sleep – or at least to come to bed – if I slept in the nude, which only encouraged me in the endeavor. I didn’t know if it was my many years of isolation or just a quickly developed addiction, but I could never get enough of him, and he was perpetually thrilled to accommodate me. Travel became even more important, as Link had been completely serious a hundred years before when he’d said he’d been seeking out places to _cultivate silent princess in the wild_. We’d always taken our time getting from one place to another, but now we were setting records for slowest voyages. It was much more obvious to me now why everyone had _assumed_ that Link and I had been intimate before the Calamity; there was so much _potential_ in wandering the wilds together. We did our best to make up for lost opportunities.

And, oh, I learned so many amazing words and double entendres. Classic literature was infinitely more amusing, now that I was in on the joke. There was an entire field of Gerudo literature referred to as _erotic poetry_ that was complete and utter nonsense – literally, the phrases had no meaning – that Link explained to me, in detail. It seemed it wasn’t written to be pleasing to the _ear_ , but rather enunciated silently between a woman’s thighs.

I had once been jealous of his time in Gerudo Town. I learned that jealousy is very easy to abandon in favor of intense gratitude. Bless every one of those women, and bless everything they taught his clever mouth.

Many of the things I learned, though, were not quite so pleasant. Not that anything was truly _bad_ , per se, but few things can compare to the sort of education was I getting from Link

“Good news travels fast” is never so true as when it applies to an engagement. My next visit to Hateno VIllage made my first trip through town look tame. Between the Goron traders, the reinvigorated Rito postal service, and the influx of Zora in the waterways, everyone in Hyrule seemed to know of my intention to marry Link before we had even left Zora’s Domain.

Purah was capable of spending a million rupees a month, according to her estimates, but a closer look at her finances showed she’d only amassed a few million rupees of expenses over the entirety of the previous century. It would take awhile to get the accounts settled, but given she was currently biologically younger than myself, we had time to make the ledgers balance.

The bill for repairs to the Temple of Time was a fraction of Purah’s reimbursement backlog, which helped put the problem in focus for her. Bolson was also a lot more upfront about actual costs, which solidified him in my mind as the only choice for the new Minister of Infrastructure. He took a little convincing, but Karson agreed to keep the name of the construction company the same, so Bolson was able to step down gracefully.

Word spread outside of Hyrule about the Calamity’s end, and soon the descendants of Hylians who had fled were making their way back into the country. Repatriating those who returned was an entirely new problem, and land claims had to made on a case by case basis. Surprisingly enough, Link took that entire issue off my hands. Anyone who claimed their family had owned a plot of land simply had to convince Link of their legitimacy; he’d crossed the length and breadth of Hyrule before the Calamity, and while he hadn’t known _everyone_ , he knew enough to be able to immediately judge the truth to a claim. A man who came from Labrynna insisted his grandfather had owned a series of shops in Castle Town; five minutes of talking to Link revealed the man had been a fisherman in Necluda, and likely never even set foot in Hyrule Field.

To say I was grateful that Link’s memory had been restored was a monumental understatement.

Every day that passed brought new revelations, new tasks to be done, new responsibilities to be shouldered or delegated; we were dropped upon the top of a mountain of work, and every second of our plummet brought more momentum, more chaos. I knew it would likely never end; as Hyrule continued to recover it would only grow more and more complex. I would spend the rest of my life creating systems to account for the continually changing environment of my people.

Link suggested we post notices at the stables and townships regarding the need for new duchies, and allow the populace to nominate those most deserving. Some of the nominations were, obviously, hideous self-promotion. A surprising number were eloquently worded and well-thought out arguments in favor of people I wouldn’t have considered on my own. Hebra, for instance, produced three separate endorsements for a shield-surfer named Selmie who lived up in the mountains; her concern for the well-being of the land and its natural resources, paired with strong self-confidence and a history in the public eye quickly sold her as the best candidate for the new Duchy of Hebra. Link spent ten days trying to track her down to notify her of my intention, and three more convincing her to accept. In the end, he’d had to give her his Hylian shield and promise to get her a new one if it she ever managed to break it.

He returned to me from that quest in the middle of the night, using the Sheikah slate to meet me in Hateno Village. Until we had sections of the castle rebuilt and livable again, not to mention new soldiers trained to defend it, Link preferred me to stay in his house when we were apart. There was a reason this part of Necluda had stayed relatively untouched by the Calamity, and we agreed it was the safest place for me that wasn’t at his side.

I was asleep when he came home, but the sound of the door opening jarred me awake. I’d locked it, of course, but he was trained by the Sheikah _and_ built the lock, so it was no defense against him. “It’s just me,” he called softly, and my anxious concern was immediately replaced with happy relief. I listened as he dropped his things at the foot of the stairs and climbed to the loft. He unbuckled the Sword and was pulling off his snowquill armor as he hurried towards our bed.

“She said yes, finally,” he started to tell me, but I shook my head to forestall him.

“Come to bed before your elixir wears off,” I told him, gesturing to the half of the bed between me and the wall. “We can talk in the morning.”

He chuckled as he stepped out of his boots and pants, and reached up to strip the feathers and rubies out of his hair before gracefully toppling over me to land on the other side of the bed. I helped him slip under the covers and then his arms were around me and his skin was still radiating heat from the elixirs he’d consumed to stay warm in Hebra this long after sunset.

“Using me to warm up the sheets?” he asked as he buried his face in my hair and breathed deeply.

“Yes,” I answered, remorselessly. “How long has it been since you slept?”

“What day is it?” he countered, his voice already drowsy.

“Good night, love,” I laughed, pressing a kiss to his forehead as he seemed to deflate into the blankets. “Welcome home.”

He muttered something unintelligible as his breathing slowed. He had probably only slept once or twice in the two weeks he’d been away; as much as I would have preferred a more enthusiastic return, there was something particularly dear about him rushing home to collapse into my arms and immediately lapse unconscious. I was thrilled to be able to provide him even a fraction of the security he’d made me feel a hundred years before; it wasn’t something I had realized I needed until I had it.

He shifted a bit, half-awake, until his hands wrapped softly around my waist, and he murmured something else against my neck. It was a sleepy blend of Gerudo and Hylian that sounded like a repetition of the words for _love_. He pulled me closer and then went limp, already soundly asleep.

The wedding wasn’t until the next Spring, but that was just logistics anymore. I wasn’t likely to get pregnant until a year or two after the fact, regardless of our premarital activities. When I had read through the histories as a child, I had assumed it was simply the proper way things happened. Now, with a vague awareness of a contentedly watching Hylia simmering in the back of my mind, I knew it was Her gift to Her progeny. She was giving me these years, my youth; we weren’t particularly fecund as a family, but we were definitely consistent. I would become pregnant right around the age of twenty-one, and bear a daughter we would name for Link’s mother. And then, because when the moon was high and my mind was clear I could still see Her plan for me, I knew my daughter would have enough sisters to make up for the void she would otherwise have in her extended family.

Some day in the far future, she would come to find me on a balcony or walkway or open-air garden as I knelt to give thanks to our dearest ancestor, and she would see my love for her in the golden glow of my face. She would know, as I would always know, that she was loved by her mother, and her mother’s mother, and a long line of women leading back to Hylia herself, and that even without her sisters she would never be alone.

I could see her, on nights like this, in the resting contentment of her father’s face.

But we were young, still, with a lifetime of work ahead of us, and the future of our race ten thousand years from now to begin to plan for. I didn’t have to fret about her; she would come when she was needed. As I had. As her father had. As a thousand incarnations of her father had, down through the spiraling annals of history.

I laid there and watched him sleep until the sun rose, finding rest in peaceful contemplation and wondering if this was how the Sheikah managed both their outward calm and their minimalistic sleeping patterns. The light crept in through the window, and I knew the endless work of rebuilding Hyrule would come soon to claim me once more. Today, however, I didn’t have to do it alone.

“Open your eyes,” I bid him, softly, and he blinked blearily at me, a smile slowly creasing his face as he registered where he was. “Wake up, Link.”


End file.
